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AW: twsapi: let's do it right
¿ªÔÆÌåÓýRichard, on one hand I agree with you.
One
the other hand, there a lot?s of frustrating things:
?
When I
became and IB customer, they (the swiss IB?guys) told me that the API was
finished and not beta. I was the one who told them later, that it was wrong
after Ernie (TAC) told me that it is beta.
I
found lots of bugs. I reported them to IB. I never got a reply. The only
positive result was, that they fixed some of the bugs.
I even
found bugs which occured randomly and caused wrong
executions:
-Once
I placed an order through the API. TWS showed the order correctly. The order was
a limit order and should have been executed. There was more than 30 minutes,
where the order could have been filled. But IB didn?t fill the
order.
An
other time they filled too much: I placed an order for 1000 stocks and they
filled 1500 stocks.
An
other time, they filled the order correctly but TWS showed still an open order,
which I coulnd?t cancel.
Every
time they agreed with me that something went wrong on their side. They told me
that they would fix it. But since they don?t have a detailed enhancement report
or version list or something, I never now what they have fixed and so I think
that one should assume IB to be to unreliable for complete automated trading.
But it is possible to do automated trading if you do lot of cross checks in your
software which then send alerts to you.
?
When I
started with the API, I took the ActiveX-API and linked it to Microsoft Access.
Then I found several bugs, which I reported.?One bug-fix was, that they no
longer support the ActiveX for Excel. This is quite annoying or me, since I
spent a lot of time on connecting MS-Access and ActiveX.
So I
have to use an old version of the API, but this may? lead to an errorneous
TWS.
So I
have to switch to DDE. I asked several times, if they will incooperate the
functionalities that ActiveX had. I never got a reply. So I were not sure for a
long time, if I just invested my time in the wrong brokerage
company.
BTW:
I?m working for more than a year with Cybertrader, there API team is very
responsive, and they told me from the first second that it?s beta.
?
I
worked 2 years for a mayor consulting company on a software developement
project. We had a very successful project with one of germany?s biggest
companies.
I
think the reason why the project was so sucessful was
communication:
We had
many beta testers and we spent most of our time on talking to them. So we knew
exactly where they saw problems, what we should change and what they
wanted.
The
beta testers were very happy, because they knew exactly what we are going to do
and that they have real impact.
The
big anonymous group of future users of our software was also happy (that?s what
we heared), because every body knew one of the beta testers. So everybody had
the chance to understand the way we were developing by talking to one of the
beta testers.
I
don?t think that we developed our software a very special way, I just think this
is how software should be developed. I talked to IB if they wanted to improve
their API communication, but they didn?t want to.
?
I
guess this group with more than 400 (?) members should be important to IB. If
this would be the case, I would recommend that a moderator(Scott, for
example)?of IB sends once a week a email to IB with the most important
questions and suggestions. IB answers the email and sticks to that, what they
said. So IB would just have to answer one email per week (shouldn?t be too much
work) and there would be some communication process.
I?m
sure that somebody of the group would be interested in doing that. But I?m not
sure if IB really thinks that 400 clients are important.
?
Marcus
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