Glad to....Let the listing and ranking begin.
Scott
--- In twsapi@y..., "Marcus Jellinghaus" <Marcus_Jellinghaus@G...>
wrote:
Richard, 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
-----Ursprungliche Nachricht-----
Von: Richard Foulk [mailto:richard@s...]
Gesendet: Monday, July 15, 2002 4:21 AM
An: twsapi@y...
Betreff: twsapi: let's do it right
Aloha,
I don't work for IB, I'm just a mostly satisfied customer.
This is just a reminder, that the TWS API is still very new and
in beta. That means bugs are to be expected.
The current code may be messy and unfinished, even terrible ...
Duh! It's beta!
Beta means the authors are still working on it. They're hoping
that beta testers (that's you) will let them know about problems
and bugs and design flaws so that they can fix them.
This is the best time to get things fixed. If you sit back and
say nothing then the opportunity will be lost.
The beta will eventually become a release and the best time to
offer
feedback will be gone. As long as there are sufficient problem
reports
flowing in the beta status should continue. But beta is a one-
time
thing, once it's gone -- it's gone!
Please, please, please report bugs to IB! Don't just work around
them.
That would be really dumb.
Thanks
Richard
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