Obviously, Jon, Bob and I are in sync about VB versus C++. I do agree with Jon that C++ will be faster than VB. I disagree slightly with Jon about tick charts.
With a reasonably fast PC (say 300Mhz PII or higher), you should be able to get pretty good performance using VB. The newer versions of VB have increased performance over older versions.
For example, my QFeed application:
- retrieves user parameters from an Access database,
- reads the current 30 one-minute bars of real-time QFeed data for over 100 symbols,
- analyzes price and volume,
- selects the 10-20 symbols that currently meet criteria,
- formats the data into readable, colored symbols, and
- displays the data in a 31 column grid.
After the first refresh (when data is initially cached), typical response time is 1/2 second to 1 second from the time you press the refresh button until the data displays. This varies depending on how tight the criteria is. Tighter criteria = fewer symbols displayed = faster refresh time.
Note that refreshing the grid is the slow part. In tests, I found that over 90% of the time was spent setting the data in the grid. Reading and analyzing the data typically takes less than 100 milliseconds.
I haven't worked with tick data, but I think that VB should be able to handle it.
Regards,
Dan. |
