OATS Report - November 2, 1999

November 2, 1999

Prior to the release of OATS in the test environment on August 23, 1999 and the production environment on September 20, 1999, OATS deviated from its own format specifications by accepting ROE records with an additional ending delimiter.

The most recent OATS release now enforces the delimited format, which has been specified in Chapter 5, "Data Reporting Formats," and Appendix C, "Order Report Formats" of the OATS Technical Specifications since 1998, by rejecting all ROE records ending with an additional delimiter. An example of a Routing Report record with an additional delimiter that would now be rejected if submitted to OATS follows (the Issue and Firm MP IDs have been changed from the original record).

The last five characters of the record are:

• the "E" character, which represents the Routing Method Code field,
• a comma, which represents a blank Bunched Order Indicator field,
• a comma, which is optional as specified in Section 5.1 of the OATS Technical Specifications and would not cause a rejection,
• another comma, which is not needed and would cause a rejection,
• and an end of record marker

An example of a valid Routing Report record without the extra delimiter follows.

Refer to the OATS Technical Specifications for more information on order and data reporting formats or call Business and Technology Support Services at (800) 321-NASD or via e-mail.