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The most significant event since man walked on the Moon!!!!!
We are pleased to announce that following several weeks of negotiation
we have signed an agreement with MarketStream, Inc. that makes it
possible to interface TradeLab to the Universal Market Data Server
(UMDS) and supply a bundled package.
You will like the price, because a version of the server that can be
used only with TradeLab will be supplied free to any TradeLab licensee
who wants it. MarketStream has a multi-user version available for a
reasonable fee for those who want to use a single server with TradeLab
and other compatible products like Bay Option's Option Simulator, Essex
Trading Company's Option Pro, MarketSoft Research's Tradewind,
MicroForce's Market Detective, MicroStar's Top Step Programs, or Windows
On Wallstreet DayTrader.
The multi-user server version has other advantages. The license fee
includes user technical support (technical support will not be provided
for the free version) and access to tick and daily historic data via the
Internet whenever you have a computer, datafeed, or power failure. You
will be able to upgrade from the free to the multi-user version without
losing any data you have collected with the free version.
Though the single user version will be free, there will be a $100
UMDS-to-TradeLab interface module charge. That fee will offset the
significant costof writing an interface between the products.
The interface has to be much different than the interface used with the
Omega Server, because the product designs have almost nothing in common.
The UMDS uses much more efficient interfacing that makes it possible to
access near-term tick data almost instantly. All the data received in a
day for all markets is kept in memory, so it can be read without need
for disk access. That makes it practical to repeatedly scan thousands
of symbols in real time for price breakouts, high volume transactions,
or other things.
It also greatly reduces the risk of losing incoming data during server
data accesses.
There is another important difference. Omega Servers build 5-minute
data files for each symbol during the night. Those files are used to
create price bar data for all five-minute interval multiples. If a user
wants a 15 -minute bar chart, the Omega Server makes each 15-minute bar
from three 5- minute bars. If a user wants 30-minute bars, each
30-minute bar is made from six five minute bars, etc.
The UMDS doesn't create five minute bars. It saves tick data and daily
data. Charting programs have to create the intraday bar data users want
from raw tick data. That slows charting somewhat where users want bars
with intervals that are integral multiples of five minutes, but it
avoids a wide range of practical problems.
If you edit a bad tick in the Omega Server, the associated five minute
bar data has to be updated before the change will be seen in charts that
have bars that are integral multiples of five minutes. Furthermore, if
a user wants to fix a bad price seen in a five minute bar chart, editing
the data being charted would not fix the tick database, it only would
fix the five-minute bar data.
There are some speed advantages to the five-minute bar data method, but
there are many practical problems with it. There are a variety of ways
for automatic processes to go wrong, leaving users with daily,
five-minute bar, and tick data that doesn't match and with no good way
to know which is right.
We like the UMDS method better. We think on balance it is the better
approach. However, our interface will have to perform some of the
functions performed by an Omega Server, which is one of the reasons we
will have to charge a small interface module fee.
Not only will we have to write an interface with those capabilities, but
MarketStream also is having to add some capabilities to the UMDS to make
it suitable to our needs. Kent Gryzich at MarketStream estimates those
additions will take about 30 days. Their current server is Version 2.
The new version with the TradeLab accommodations will be Version 3.
One of those accommodations is the ability to import data into the
server. That will enable us to write a routine that will automatically
copy all the data from an Omega Server to a UMDS in a single operation,
so users can get all their Omega Server data over into TradeLab
painlessly. It also will make it possible to get file data from
end-of-day services into the server, so the server can function as a
central repository for data from all sources.
We already have started development of the UMDS-to-TradeLab interface.
It should be ready for testing by the time Version 3 of the UMDS is
released.
-Bob Brickey
Scientific Approaches
sci@xxxxxxxxxx
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