Makes sense if in case you are employing backfill with the backfill tool, in which case it would be more efficient with 1 min bars. I personally employ the format file controls in conjunction with g-fin downloader (as discussed previously) for backfill and let amibroker do the heavy lifting. Takes about 3 - 4 secs to erase, backfill & re-save 50 ticker data for the complete day. After trading is done for the day, I overwrite the complete day's data for the 50 tickers as well as backfill 150 more (in ami watchlist) with 1 min bars from g-fin via the same method. Takes about 10 - 11 secs. Once a quarter, the complete data is re-compacted to 3 min bars so as to not compromise historical charting speed
rmike,
You have not understood my point. I am not talking about backfill at the EOD. That is very easy with $tickmode 1. And we learnt it from you. This is backfill of gaps.
Suppose you are watching live market and suddenly there is network disruption for 5-10 minutes. You can do nothing but sit on hands.
When network returns you have to fill the data for those 5-10 minutes gap into Amibroker to synchronise your charts. RTDMan starts pumping data into Amibroker. You cannot depend on format controls. $tickmode 1 cannot be used because it erases subsequent data also. Hence, say my network went off at 12:05:30 and returned at 12:11:02, I have to backfill from 12:05:00 to 12:11:59. With 1 min. bar period, it has to erase just 2 bars per scrip 12:05 and 12:11. With 1 sec bar period, Amibroker has to erase 88 bars per scrip (12:05:00 to 12:05:30 = 30 bars plus 12:11:02 to 12:11:59 = 88 bars).
Amibroker does not offer any API for bulk erase of bars though you can do it in quote editor. It has to be done in loop while programming. Therefore I shifted to one minute bars. I do not look at 1 sec. time intervals as I cannot trade so quickly. However, I kept it optional for backwards compatibility.
Recently, I changed my ISP and fortunately, I am getting uninterrupted network 24 hours. With the accuracy of RTDMan for 1 min. bar period, I do not feel any need to backfill at EOD.
What about those have frequent network interruptions?
Edit-
Don't need to!!! If experience is anything to go by, yours, TB's & Yusi's coded offerings are implicitly trusted & appreciated
Thank you. It was Yusi's code that inspired me to develop this. He was gracious to give me his utility without any expectation in return. Knowing that I am his competitor.
The only major enhancement (apart from data interrupt warning incorporation by TB) I can suggest in GUI avatar of the utility would be to incorporate auto ticker pick up from the NOW/ NEST watchlist (BTW I have yet to make acquaintance with the GUI avatar)
GUI Avtar is done in Autoit. It consumes RTDMan. Yes. It does pick up tickers as well as indexes from watchlist and saves them to settings.ini. Thereafter, it fires RTDMan.
The mod was not in settings.ini but was in the main code itself. If I remember correctly, both the worker cpp's were coded to multiply volume by a factor of 100, if the ticker happened to be 'Nifty'
I have not done it yet. I do not know what is its exact name in CDS segment. If I get it, it is 2 minutes job to incorporate.