John-
Your pretty close on TradeStation:
- passwords expire 'till the product is paid for, then they issue a permanent password.
- the end-of-day version is a lot cheaper and fully functional except for the server.
- I've heard of a product called TradeWin (?), but I believe it's a server that works with TradeStation (the TS server has some speed problems with older machines). Hadn't heard of WinWave... ??
- your description of differences between Easy Language versions for SC and TS is very good. There are more extensions, though, than you'd imagine and links to other code. Opens up the world of C, etc.
-I've seen TS code imported into SC, but I don't know if it had been tailored or not. My impression was that there were no constraints on the code and the limits were in the editor, but I'm guessing here.
- in comparing MS vs. TS, if you want to write a good system test of a complicated system, the only real choice is TS. MetaStock is infantile by comparison. But typical of Omega, they give you great tools so you can do everything yourself. MS, on the otherhand, is far better populated with indicators and it's easier & faster to create new indicators and tests. The trade off is ease vs. power.
- TS (at least the RT version) takes a Herculean effort to get running! I had experienced help and it still took me weeks; e.g. the database for the server is completely separate from the database for the historical data. You have to activate the symbols separately, so you do everything associated with data twice.
- you can use the RT-collected data (if you have enough history) to run system tests, but unless the data is in the Omega format, system tests/scans take 2X longer to execute because all data is converted to Omega format to run tests: TC2000, AIQ, MetaStock, ASCII, and their own server format!. They provide the tools to export from the server data to the data manger in Omega format.
- the system test summary that Omega supplies sucks. You need to either write your own or buy something from a third party supplier, e.g. RINA Systems has something for that purpose (don't know if it's any good or not).
TS is a mixed bag. I bought it out of frustration trying to write a difficult system test for MS. I solved the problem and bought a dozen others. (the latest is that I can no longer download from the Omega ftp site, but of course "they checked the site, and their's nothing wrong". Yeah, right.)
Bruce |
