A Deep Dive into FDC3 2.2 and Bringing Interop to the Web

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For years, FDC3 has been the backbone of desktop interoperability, allowing financial applications to share context and trigger actions seamlessly. But this power has mostly been limited to applications running in desktop containers like Electron. Anyone who wanted to build a hybrid application that worked across both the desktop and a standard web browser faced significant engineering hurdles.

The video even from almost a year ago is still relevant. Kris West and Rob Moffat provide a detailed look at the new FDC3 2.2 specification, with a major focus on the technical groundwork being laid to bring FDC3’s capabilities to the web.

What’s the Core Challenge with FDC3 and the Web?

Historically, FDC3 was designed with the desktop in mind. The assumption was that a desktop agent would be present to broker communication between applications. This model breaks down in a standard web browser, which operates in a sandboxed environment and can’t just talk to a local desktop agent. The video breaks down this challenge and presents the solutions being developed to bridge this gap, aiming for a true “write once, run anywhere” FDC3 ecosystem.

How Does FDC3 2.2 Address This?

The presentation dives into the concrete technical solutions that make web integration possible. This isn’t just a high-level idea; it involves specific protocol enhancements:

  • A New Web Connection Protocol: A defined protocol that allows a web application to securely discover and establish a connection with a compatible FDC3 Desktop Agent.

  • The getAgent function: A new function in the FDC3 standard that standardizes this connection process for developers.

  • FDC3 Sail: A proof of concept is demonstrated using a rewritten Electron-based desktop agent, FDC3 Sail, which conforms to the FDC3 2.0 standard and shows how these new protocols work in practice.

Beyond web integration, FDC3 2.2 also introduces other important updates, including a new .NET binding for C# developers, improved context documentation using JSON schema files for better validation, and refinements to the standard’s overall governance.

What’s Next for FDC3?

The work doesn’t stop here. The presentation also gives a glimpse into the roadmap for FDC3 2.3 and beyond. The focus is shifting to solve more complex interoperability problems, including:

  • Richer context handling on channels.

  • Support for analytics and observability.

  • A deeper focus on identity and threat modeling to enable more secure, transactional workflows between applications.