Introduction

Given the appropriate exterior program, the shim provides a command-line and dbms augmented interface to the classic three functions of any brokerage interface, manual or automated: access to market data, execution of market transactions, and account reporting.

What program provides the market services? The Interactive Brokers Trader Workstation, IB tws client, or simply tws, consists of a socket-based api and java gui that together provide access to both external markets and the user's IB account. The shim provides access to a running instance of the tws, and so these services, via the socket api.