Symbols date range To Setting doesn't get saved.

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fs

Symbols date range To Setting doesn't get saved.

Postby fs » 18 Jun 2008

Under the symbol settings, if you change the To date to a date in the past and save the workspace, the next time you open the workspace the chart is again plotted up to the current date and not the date set previously. MC doesn't save the To setting and just default to the current date. This is especially problematic if you open workspaces containing charts with futures symbols already expired, but have data in the local database for the past data and MC try to download the data to fill the "gap" up to the current date.

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Marina Pashkova
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Postby Marina Pashkova » 19 Jun 2008

Dear Fanus,

We used to save the 'To' date in the symbol settings. However, this caused a lot of confusion on the part of our customers. 99% of MC users want their charts updated to the current day whenever those charts are opened. They don't want to manually change the settings for each chart. Thus, changing the current behavior would result in too many complaints.

Regards.

fs

Postby fs » 19 Jun 2008

How do I prevent MC to download data for expired symbols then?

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Marina Pashkova
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Postby Marina Pashkova » 20 Jun 2008

The only way for MultiCharts not to download expired contracts is to switch into the 'Offline' mode. However, if you have regular charts alongside the expired ones, you won't be able to receive new data for those charts either.

fs

Postby fs » 20 Jun 2008

I consider this a design flaw and not a very well thought out implementation. The only reason customers got confused with this in the past was caused by another design flaw in the earlier versions of MC where the to date ALWAYS stayed as set and we had to manually change to To date every day to the current date.

If you implement this as in TS, no one will get confused. This is when you set the date to the current date, the assumption is that you always want to display the data to the current date. So every day the date will be displayed up to that point. If you set the date to a date earlier than the current date, then the assumption is that you want to display the data always just up to that point and that date does not change.

Having to change the date every day you open MC is a very cumbersome process if you are developing a strategy and performing backtesting over several symbols and do not want to test this all the way to the current date.

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Postby 2haerim » 21 Jun 2008

I agree with fs.

Backfilling unnecessary period is waste of resources.

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Postby TJ » 21 Jun 2008

I agree with fs.
Backfilling unnecessary period is waste of resources.
Resources I have plenty, but it adds to the annoyance factor.

I think it is easy to add a routine inside MC to detect if the requested instrument is a future contract.
If it is an expired contract, MC should only load data up to its expiration date.

I would go further to have a pop up window to ask the user if he wants to backfill data. Because most of the time the user already has the data inside his computer. THere is no need to download "missing" data.

Also, most data provider only supply limited data on old contracts. MC could be sitting there waiting forever for the provider to download data that does not exist.

fs

Postby fs » 23 Jun 2008

I think it is easy to add a routine inside MC to detect if the requested instrument is a future contract.
If it is an expired contract, MC should only load data up to its expiration date.
Or they can just save the To date when someone change it as one would expect to happen. As I mentioned above, this was implemented improperly in the beginning causing the confusion, but unfortunately instead of implementing it correctly, the easy way out was chosen not to save it at all.


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