Our speciality is data-driven and data-dense web applications, where the clear display and
visualization of information is essential to success.
The majority of our work is in FinTech. We’ve worked directly with hedge funds and fund
administrators to develop innovative new applications for portfolio management, risk analysis, trade
capture, and oversight.
Our clients trade a combined $65b+ AUM from their
offices around the world.
Software we have designed and developed is used daily by their trading, executive, and technology
teams to report on, visualize, and manage their performance.
We have worked in multiple other industries, including education, medicine, advertising, and
construction. Regardless of the sector or project, we care deeply about every step of the
development process – from idea to back-end development to visual design and experience.
Our mission is to provide you with a development shop that listens, understands, delivers, and
delights. You, your ideas, and our team – working together to build something great.
Hoist
We embrace a wide range of tools, languages, and frameworks, and we are always tracking the latest
trends in front-end development. That said, we have a few favorite tools that consistently deliver
polished, high-performance applications to our clients.
Example Portfolio app
from Toolbox, in dark mode
Hoist: our toolkit for rapid application development
At the center of our development practice is Hoist, our full stack toolkit that powers every app
we build.
We call Hoist a “toolkit” because, while it is packaged as a set of open-source libraries, it is
also a set of well-considered dependencies, integrations, and patterns optimized for the needs of
our clients.
Built on a careful integration of server and client
technologies, Hoist provides an opinionated yet flexible foundation for building and operating
enterprise web applications.
Support for soft-configuration, user preferences, activity tracking, error handling, and more come
ready to use with client and server-side APIs and utilities. Developers and Ops teams can configure
apps at runtime, view and search server logs, adjust user preferences, and access
application-specific management screens from a dedicated and extensible admin application.
Simple but effective activity, error, and performance tracking is pre-integrated throughout the
toolkit. Hoist’s bundled admin app allows for browsing, searching, and quick charting of activity
data and error reports. Monitoring APIs are provided to check and alert on app-specific metrics.
Hoist includes a built-in set of
admin tools for app configuration and monitoring.
React: A framework for modern JavaScript UIs
The fundamental technology for the Hoist front-end is React, the innovative (and industry standard)
framework for creating modern JavaScript UIs.
Along with React, we make extensive use of MobX,
an observable-based state management system. MobX is ideal for building highly Reactive applications
with minimal boilerplate, allowing developers to focus on business logic, and user experience,
rather than state management.
Building on top of React and MobX, we are able to integrate best-of-breed libraries such as
AG-Grid, HighCharts, and BlueprintJS with a suite of highly customized components for data
manipulation, layout, and visualization. It all comes together in our comprehensive client-side
library, Hoist React .
Grails: enterprise Java for an agile world
Hoist’s UI server is powered by Grails, a
framework for rapid web application development underpinned by enterprise-grade Java technologies
such as Spring and Hibernate.
Grails provides a flexible yet robust MVC architecture, strong support for data validation and
transactions, and a wide ecosystem of plugins, including our own custom plugin, Hoist Core .
Grails is based on Groovy, a modern, dynamic
language built on Java that allows us to leverage a wide array of JVM-based libraries and integrate
with industry-standard APIs from Bloomberg, FIX messaging feeds, Documentum, realtime pricing
providers, and more.
Mobile Design and Strategy
While the majority of our work targets desktop web browsers, Hoist includes a dedicated set of
components tailored for use on mobile devices.
Applications can serve mobile users a dedicated user interface that caters to the unique limitations
and opportunities of the platform, while still sharing significant business logic, styling, and
component configuration with a full featured desktop client.
XH has worked with clients to enable secure mobile access to their web apps, using both
industry-standard BYOD platforms and custom-tailored solutions.
Toolbox
To demonstrate and test the Hoist toolkit, we publish Toolbox, a set of live sample applications
that demonstrate the major components, utilities, and coding patterns available to all Hoist apps.
