[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":117},["ShallowReactive",2],{"article-real-time-data-infrastructure":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"accentColor":6,"body":7,"category":14,"coreIdea":15,"crossLink":18,"ctaBody":24,"ctaLinkText":25,"ctaLinkTo":26,"datePublished":27,"description":11,"extension":28,"headline":29,"headlineAccent":30,"heroParagraph":31,"meta":32,"navigation":33,"ogDescription":34,"ogTitle":35,"path":36,"publishedAt":37,"readTime":38,"sections":39,"seo":88,"seoDescription":89,"seoTitle":90,"sidebarLink":91,"stem":94,"summaryCards":95,"tags":111,"teaser":115,"__hash__":116},"articles\u002Farticles\u002Freal-time-data-infrastructure.md","Real Time Data Infrastructure","lime",{"type":8,"value":9,"toc":10},"minimark",[],{"title":11,"searchDepth":12,"depth":12,"links":13},"",2,[],"Data Platforms",{"heading":16,"body":17},"The brief said 'live.' The engineering challenge was making that true.","Sub-second data delivery across multiple vendor feeds with different formats and timing is not a reporting problem. It is an architecture problem - and the solution is designed before the first line of code is written.",{"accentColor":6,"label":19,"title":20,"description":21,"linkText":22,"linkTo":23},"Real-world example","SA Market Data Charting Platform - live pricing across six market categories.","Three vendor feeds. TradingView charting. Sub-second delivery. Read how the architecture was designed to make three feeds behave as one.","Read case study","\u002Finsights\u002Fcase-studies\u002Fsa-market-data-charting-platform","If you are building a platform where data latency carries real consequence and want to understand what the infrastructure would require, we can talk through it.","Start a conversation","\u002Fcontact","2026-06-18","md","Most systems called real-time","are actually polling.","Real-time is one of the most overused terms in software. The distinction matters - not for technical purity, but because polling and genuine event-driven delivery have fundamentally different infrastructure requirements. When the latency requirement is sub-second, polling is not an option.",{},true,"Polling and real-time are not the same thing. When 'live' is a genuine requirement - not a marketing term - the engineering challenge changes significantly. Here is what it actually requires.","What Real-Time Data Infrastructure Actually Requires","\u002Farticles\u002Freal-time-data-infrastructure","June 2026","7 min read",[40,47,57,67,77],{"id":41,"navLabel":42,"paragraphs":43},"intro","Polling vs real-time",[44,45,46],"When a client brief includes the word 'live,' the question worth asking is what they mean. In most cases, they mean faster than what they currently have. In some cases, they mean actually real-time - data that updates at the moment something changes, not on a schedule.","These are not the same thing, and they do not have the same solution. Polling - checking for new data every few seconds - is significantly simpler to implement. Event-driven delivery, where data is pushed to the consumer at the instant it changes, requires a different architecture entirely.","For most operational dashboards, faster polling is adequate. For contexts where data latency carries real consequence - live market pricing, operational status that drives immediate decisions, field data that must reach the office before the situation changes - polling is not sufficient.",{"id":48,"navLabel":49,"pillLabel":50,"pillColor":6,"heading":51,"paragraphs":52},"the-polling-limit","Where polling falls short","The polling ceiling","Where polling reaches its limit.",[53,54,55,56],"Polling works by asking a question on a schedule: 'Has anything changed since the last time I checked?' The minimum practical polling interval for most web applications is one to two seconds - below that, the overhead of the request-response cycle starts to affect performance.","In a market data context, a one-second polling interval means prices can be up to one second stale at any given moment. For a business using that data to make trading decisions, one second is not a minor inconvenience - it is the difference between the price you acted on and the price you got.","The same principle applies in operational contexts. A job-tracking system that polls for updates every thirty seconds shows the office a view of the operation that is perpetually half a minute behind. For most logistics operations, that is acceptable. For an operator coordinating time-sensitive loads with multiple parties, it is a constraint that affects decisions.","The limit of polling is not the technology - it is the fundamental nature of a request-based model. To get data faster than polling allows, the architecture needs to invert: instead of the consumer asking 'is there anything new?', the data source needs to push 'here is what just changed.'",{"id":58,"navLabel":59,"pillLabel":60,"pillColor":61,"heading":62,"paragraphs":63},"event-driven-architecture","Event-driven delivery","How it works","teal","What event-driven data delivery actually requires.",[64,65,66],"Event-driven data delivery uses persistent connections - most commonly WebSocket connections - to push data from the source to the consumer at the moment it changes. The consumer does not ask; the source notifies.","The infrastructure requirements are different from a polling-based system in several ways. The server needs to maintain a large number of persistent connections simultaneously, rather than handling discrete requests. The data pipeline needs to handle bursts - moments when many prices change at once - without queuing or dropping events. The client-side rendering needs to update efficiently at the rate data arrives, without degrading the user interface.","Each of these is a solvable problem, but each requires deliberate design. A polling-based dashboard can often be built by adding a refresh interval to a standard request-response pattern. A actually real-time system requires an architecture that is designed for it from the start.",{"id":68,"navLabel":69,"pillLabel":70,"pillColor":6,"heading":71,"paragraphs":72},"the-market-data-example","A concrete example","Work that shipped","What this looked like on a real project.",[73,74,75,76],"A South African market data provider needed prices on screen the moment they moved - across stocks, indices, commodities, crypto, forex, and agricultural markets. The brief had one requirement that changed everything: the data had to be live. Not refreshed every few seconds. Live.","The platform integrated three vendor feeds - Safex Agri for South African agricultural market data, FMP and Tiingo for broader financial markets - into a unified interface built on the TradingView Charting Library. Each vendor feed has different data formats, different timing characteristics, and different API behaviour under load.","The integration challenge was not the charting. TradingView is a mature, well-documented library that handles the rendering side competently. The engineering challenge was making three feeds with different formats and timing behave as a single, coherent data stream - so that the chart updates continuously and consistently regardless of which vendor the data came from.","The result was sub-second data delivery across six market categories, with the TradingView interface receiving a normalised stream that behaved the same regardless of the underlying source. The published outcome: a platform that scales live.",{"id":78,"navLabel":79,"pillLabel":80,"pillColor":81,"heading":82,"paragraphs":83},"when-real-time-is-the-right-answer","When real-time is right","The right choice","blue","When real-time infrastructure is and is not the right answer.",[84,85,86,87],"Not every operational dashboard needs sub-second data. The additional complexity of event-driven architecture is a genuine cost - in development time, in infrastructure, in ongoing maintenance - and it is only worth paying when the latency requirement actually demands it.","The question to ask is: what is the consequence of data being N seconds old when a decision is made? If the answer is 'minor inconvenience,' faster polling is probably sufficient. If the answer is 'wrong decision,' genuine real-time architecture is the appropriate investment.","For market data, trading platforms, operational dispatch systems, and live logistics coordination, the answer is usually the latter. For internal reporting dashboards, management summaries, and analytical tools where data is examined rather than acted on in the moment, it usually is not.","The scoping conversation for any data platform should include an honest assessment of this question - because the architectural choice at the start of the project determines both the capability and the cost of what gets built.",{"description":11},"Most systems described as real-time are polling. When sub-second data delivery is a genuine requirement - like live market pricing - the infrastructure challenge is entirely different. Here is what it actually involves.","What Real-Time Data Infrastructure Actually Requires | Sharp Software Solutions",{"text":92,"to":93},"Data platforms service","\u002Fservices\u002Fdata-platforms","articles\u002Freal-time-data-infrastructure",[96,101,106],{"label":97,"value":98,"body":99,"icon":100,"accentColor":6},"The distinction","Polling vs event-driven","Polling checks for new data on a schedule. Event-driven data moves when something changes. For sub-second requirements, only one of these works.","i-lucide-clock",{"label":102,"value":103,"body":104,"icon":105,"accentColor":61},"The challenge","Multiple feeds, one interface","When data comes from several sources with different formats and timing, the integration layer is the hard problem - not the chart.","i-lucide-git-merge",{"label":107,"value":108,"body":109,"icon":110,"accentColor":81},"The requirement","Live means live","In contexts where data latency carries financial or operational consequence, 'fast enough' is not the same as 'live.'","i-lucide-zap",[14,112,113,114],"Real-Time Data","Custom Software","Architecture","Real-time is one of the most overused terms in software. Most implementations described as real-time are polling - the system checks for new data every few seconds. True real-time is event-driven, and the two have fundamentally different infrastructure requirements.","w2A0CwhWYBeE4Yl1JXdIVHKP4fiWz77X3aVjNv_A4u0",1782825462953]