Bloomberg Open API

Bloomberg Open API announced recently - is it just the Bloomberg SDK which had been (limitedly) exposed to public for quite a while?

My understanding is that Bloomberg SDK is possible to use only on the machine with a Bloomberg Terminal installed, but the recently announced Open API (which is syntactically the same) will be possible to use from any machine.

Is that correct? Are there any restrictions on the new API (say, delayed responses etc)? Just cannot believe they're giving away for free something that costed money - any clarifications are welcome!

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EDIT: The above was probably not clear, so to rephrase:

1. I wonder if the newly announced Open API is syntactically the Bloomberg SDK API (or how they call it?) which has been available for years already
2. assuming there are restrictions on using Open API on any machine (comparing to using SDK from a machine with Bloomberg Terminal installed) - I wonder if those restrictions are specified in detail in some official Bloomberg doc.

I can myself guess on both questions, but I thought I'd rather ask :)

Since the data is not free, you can use this Bloomberg API Emulator (disclaimer: it's my project) to learn how to send requests and make subscriptions. This emulator looks and acts just like the real Bloomberg API, although it doesn't return real data. In my time developing applications that use the Bloomberg API, I rarely care about the actual data that I'm handling; I care about how to retrieve data.

If you want to learn how to use the Bloomberg API give it a try. If you want to test out your code without an account, use this. A Bloomberg account costs about $2,000 a month, so you can save a lot with this project.

The emulator now supports Java and C++ in addition to C#.

C#, C++, and Java:

• Intraday Tick Requests
• Intraday Bar Requests
• Reference Data Requests
• Historical Data Requests
• Market Data Subscriptions

Edit: Updated Project link, moved to github

The API's will provide full access to LIVE data, and developers can thus provide applications and develop against the API without paying licencing fees. Consumers will pay for any data received from the apps provided by third party developers, and so BB will grow their audience and revenue in that way.

> NOTE: Bloomberg is offering this programming interface (BLPAPI) under a free-use license. This license does not include nor provide access to any Bloomberg data or content.

Source: <http://www.openbloomberg.com/open-api/></strike>

This API has been available for a long time and enables to get access to market data (including live) if you are running a Bloomberg Terminal or have access to a Bloomberg Server, which is chargeable.

The only difference is that the API (not its code) has been open sourced, so it can now be used as a dependency in an open source project for example, without any copyrights issues, which was not the case before.

I don't think so. The API's will provide access to delayed quotes, there is no way that real time data or tick data, will be provided for free.