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Technology Stocks : Lance B's : Its A Beautiful Thing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Allinder who wrote (1430)	11/21/1999 7:12:00 PM
From: LANCE B	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4792

MYTRACK MEMBERS; Dear Member: There are three items in this service bulletin: 1. Explanation and Apology for Friday morning outage 2. New capability in myTrade to rectify outage problems 3. A bulletin to Contest users ======================================================================= I. Friday's Outage Background: ---------------- Our primary data base of real time prices is kept in a "pfile" (pricefile) which grows from week to week as we add ticker symbols. When we introduced additional fields (like avgerage daily volume, shares outstanding, etc.) we did not have room in the pfile hence we created a companion "dfile" to keep these values. When the "dfile" was first designed it was created with a maximum of 600,000 ticker symbols. The Problem: ----------------- On Friday we went over that limit (we add tickers on the fly - like new issues and new options) and hence the servers crashed. We quickly moved a new version of server software (we already had the needed version on 22 as a test) to all other systems. That process took about 15-20 minutes. The Apology: ---------------- We are sorry about the disruption. We try to be up 100% of the time (and to a large measure we think you would agree that we have a good "track" record). The Solution: ---------------- This week we will roll in a new "dfile" design that has no limit - rather it will be tied to the size of the "pfile". Hence, this problem should not re-occur. ========================================================================== II. New myTrade Capability Background: ---------------- When you place an order two things happen. First you get an acknowledgment from myTrack. Then you get an acknowledgment from the broker which the order was routed to. Since we started we really never had a problem where the order was acknowledged by myTrack but not by the broker (let's call it an "orphan" order). You were not able to cancel such an order. In the rare occasion where there was an orphan order, you would call in and we would cancel the order. The Problem: ----------------- Friday's outage resulted in quite a few of these orphan orders and our phones were swamped. The result was that your buying power was affected and you couldn't get through on the phones to have a broker cancel the order. The same type of problem also occur when ADP (Herzog's network provider) goes down. The Solution: ---------------- 1. We will be hiring more brokers and increasing the capacity in our phone system to handle emergencies. We were lulled into thinking that we had enough staff and phones by the almost flawless operation of the system over the last few months. 2. Starting tomorrow you will be able to cancel orphan orders after 60 seconds. 3. With rev 4.0 of myTrack you can select the default Market Maker (Herzog or Knight). This way you can tell the system where to route based on your preference. (Remember, we always route to an ECN like Island if it's possible, as a first choice before we route to a MM). ================================================================================ === III. Contest Notice Background: ---------------- The Contest facility was designed to introduce members to the trading system in myTrack as well as to allow members to simulate real trading. It has worked well. The Problem: ----------------- Contest accounts and trade information are resident in the same SQL database that has the "real" accounts. With more and more accounts opening, the contest mechanism is adversely affecting overall performance. The Solution: ----------------- Next weekend we will move the entire Contest database to its own separate server. Existing contest positions and account values will not be lost or reset by this change.You will need to download and switch to the new myTrac rev 4.0 by the end of the week. (This version has the enhancement to let our system know to route the contest orders to "their" server) On next Monday Nov 29 . you will not see your contest accounts if you are not running rev 4.0 You do NOT have to upgrade if you are not using the Contest accounts. =============================================================================== We are constantly adding bandwidth and server capacity to handle the continuous increase in membership and trading activity. Our goal is to remain below 33% of system capacity at peak times. Thanks for taking out the time to read this. Keep those emails coming. The myTrack team at Track Data _______________________________________________________________ If you do not wish to receive any more e-mail regarding myTrack please forward this email message to unsubscribe@tdc.com. >@>*>+>=>->lancebps@aol.com ----------------------- Headers -------------------------------- Return-Path: <mytrack_undeliverable@tdc.com> Received: from rly-yh01.mx.aol.com (rly-yh01.mail.aol.com [172.18.147.33]) by air-yh02.mail.aol.com (vx) with ESMTP; Sun, 21 Nov 1999 18:06:30 -0500 Received: from hebron.tdc.com (hebron.tdc.com [198.6.16.8]) by rly-yh01.mx.aol.com (v65.4) with ESMTP; Sun, 21 Nov 1999 18:06:20 -0500 Received: from nt35 (nt35.mytrack.tdc.com [151.139.24.7]) by hebron.tdc.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id SAA20954 for lancebps@aol.com; Sun, 21 Nov 1999 18:06:19 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199911212306.SAA20954@hebron.tdc.com> Date: 21 Nov 1999 18:06:16 From: "mytrack" <mytrack_reply@tdc.com> Subject: Service Bulletin #1 Sender: mytrack_undeliverable@tdc.com To: lancebps@aol.com