Trying to avoid NT8 crashes

[D Trader]

Agree with Bugs Reported Here.... And More

Unfortunately, I find myself at the same place as others in this thread. That is, ready to throw in the towel on NT8 until the platform undergoes a thorough debugging and becomes stable -- as in does not hang, crash, or screw up the data bars, no matter what.

My feedback is based on comparison to 2 other broker platforms that rarely give me grief, and whose behavior have been highly predictable and trustworthy for years. Although they do not have the slick chart-trading functionality and theoretical speed of a fully compiled language like C#, in the day trading business stability is valued over nice-to-have features.

Within a span of just 3 months of running NT8 on an I7 trading computer with SSD (i.e. lightning fast), I have experienced:

• Unhandled internal SharpDX errors that pop a dialog but cannot continue even after the Continue button is pressed. I do not use any calls to the rendering engine in my limited indicator code... these are NT8 internal errors.
• Charts that freeze without warning. Menus continue to work, but chart cannot be manipulated using the mouse and bars/indicators stop updating. NT8 then refuses to quit from the Control Panel, and a kill task is required.
• Incorrect tick data bars plotting on charts, which can be corrected momentarily by reloading all historical data... but immediately resume inserting extra bars that distort indicators and do not resemble the identical charts on my other platforms. This has occurred for a period of hours on two separate days out of the last 4 trading days! Tick count on the bars is > 500, so no excuse.
• Problems with the Continuum data service -- slow or no login issues repeatedly over the past week.
• A number of bugs resulting from programatically correct use of native NT8 methods or properties. I have reported several via this forum.
• Frequent hanging of the entire NT8 platform when a simple save workspace menu option is selected.
• The fact that NT8 runs as a single process on a trading machine that offers 8 processor cores to increase efficiency and help separate hung processes from those that could continue on a separate core/thread.
• Goofy design ideas like (to name a few): Sharing the same chart trader with every tab in the same window (what if each chart uses different accounts or order types?), lack of right click menus to quickly set properties like color or weight on drawing objects, having to press Alt-Enter to add multi-line text to charts, and no parent workspace window to hold all the individual charts and other visual objects that need to exist in the same view (in addition to no easy way to save the workspace / view repeatedly during the day as annotations are made on charts).

Today was the last straw. Missed a 6 pt move in ES because NT8 hit me with the first 3 bullets in my above list, all within the first hour of trading.

So NT support, kindly let us know when NT is on version 9 or 10. Might have another look then.

[NinjaTrader_Jim]

Hello,

Thanks for your feedback.

We are tracking issues for these OnRender() errors and the development team is working to correct them.

I believe some of the issues you have encountered are tied together to some of the same stability issues.

Incorrect tick data bars plotting on charts, which can be corrected momentarily by reloading all historical data... but immediately resume inserting extra bars that distort indicators and do not resemble the identical charts on my other platforms. This has occurred for a period of hours on two separate days out of the last 4 trading days! Tick count on the bars is > 500, so no excuse.
Problems with the Continuum data service -- slow or no login issues repeatedly over the past week.

There were some issues with Continuum last week where clients had trouble connecting. I do not believe these are still actual, but please write in to platformsupport [at] ninjatrader [dot] com to get connected with a technician to look into the connectivity issue further.

Could you provide an example time period and instrument that gives you incorrect tick data? Could you also verify that these issues can be replicated in Safe Mode? (Hold Ctrl and double click the NinjaTrader 8 icon to start in Safe Mode. This allows you to test the platform without having workspaces and custom add-ons get in the mix.)

The fact that NT8 runs as a single process on a trading machine that offers 8 processor cores to increase efficiency and help separate hung processes from those that could continue on a separate core/thread.

It's multithreaded; it uses multiple cores. NinjaTrader 7 did not.

You will get notice of an update to the NinjaTrader 8 platform in the form of a pop up notification when you open NinjaTrader and a new release is available. There are no NinjaTrader 9 plans to make a completely new platform.

Goofy design ideas like (to name a few): Sharing the same chart trader with every tab in the same window (what if each chart uses different accounts or order types?), lack of right click menus to quickly set properties like color or weight on drawing objects, having to press Alt-Enter to add multi-line text to charts, and no parent workspace window to hold all the individual charts and other visual objects that need to exist in the same view (in addition to no easy way to save the workspace / view repeatedly during the day as annotations are made on charts).

We track interest from our clients in the form of software feature requests. We could submit feature requests on these items to improve the experience.

As this thread has gotten very large and is mostly related to OnRender() errors, please write in to platformsupport [at] ninjatrader [dot] com to get further assistance with the items you had listed. You may also open a new thread or threads relevant to these items.

Thanks!

[reach4thelasers]

@DTrader I have noticed that the Tick charts are different every time I look at them. I wonder if that's related to the second issue I reported in this post: http://ninjatrader.com/support/forum...d.php?t=100207

Which is that the BarsRequest updates for Tick Charts are not synchronized with the Chart Updates for the same Tick Chart. I've spent ages building a trading tool for Ninjatrader and its pretty useless now. I need to know when bars close to move or cancel orders; but with Tick charts my add-on does one thing and the chart does another.

I believe the solution is to ensure Tick-charts have an artificial static-boundary. Clearly every timeframe needs a static "boundary": the beginning of the hour, minute, or day for the respective timeframes. It would not make sense to start building an hourly bar at 09:26am just because that's when the chart was opened. up We always start building hourly bars from the beginning of the hour -regardless of when the data was requested.

This doesn't happen for Tick charts and tick charts do not have a time-based boundary; so an 'artificial' boundary needs to be set. For example perhaps every request for Tick data should always be "rounded up" to the whole session.. That is, if I request 100 bars of 55 Tick data, Ninjatrader should get a whole session's worth of ticks in the background, build them into 55 Tick bars, store them and, and then provide me with the last 100. By always starting the Tick-counting from the same point it would ensure that Tick bars are always static and consistent and it would ensure that they always close at the same time, and live data looks the same as historical data.

Clearly this is not happening for Tick data - the realtime bars are being being arbitrarily thrown together based on the request time and the data is inconsistent.

JIM: is this issue being tracked at all?

[D Trader]

reach4thelasers,

I have checked the "Break at EOD" check box on the Data Series properties dialog for my Tick data.

This does seem to start the tick count over at some time point -- cannot recall if it was at the 4:15 or 5:00 PM EST break for ES.

Hopefully this will help.

[NinjaTrader_Jim]

Hello,

@reach4thelasers, I have posted again in the BarsRequest thread. There are also details on the GetBid() and GetAsk() issue that you reported.

I would be happy to look into the other issues D Trader reported, but I would strongly request that we continue discourse in a new thread and leave this thread for OnRender() feedback. (It becomes difficult to track multiple issues in a large thread.)

Thanks!

[D Trader]

NinjaTrader_Jim,

Thank you for your reply. I just made an interesting observation regarding tick data, and wonder if you can comment.

As a last-ditch effort, I started NT8 in safe mode, then loaded my chart containing 555 tick ES 06-17 bars (no indicators, still in safe mode). I immediately closed NT8, then restarted NT8 as normal.

My ES tick chart loaded with the usual indicators, and for the last 2 hours has been performing exactly the same as the identical chart on a different broker platform (my reference for comparison). This is the first time ever that the two have not only looked exactly alike w.r.t. the formation of bars, but that the actual tick counter on the last bar was also the same tick-for-tick.

Now for my question -- What does safe-mode do to data that would account for the sudden improvement in tick data quality?

Thank you.

[NinjaTrader_Jim]

Hello D Trader,

Safe Mode is a diagnostic tool that prevents workspaces and Add-Ons from loading with the platform. It can be used to rule out some issues that arises from these components. It wouldn't cause anything to change the way the data comes in.

Something else that should be noted is that the data coming in may vary slightly between each provider. However, if you were using Interactive Brokers to connect and were viewing charts in Trader Workstation, the charts should always be the same.

If you are able to reproduce this matter I would appreciate it if you could give me some details so I can reproduce it on my end. If we can reproduce it, then we can give clear instructions for the development team to address the issue on their end.

(Please do this in a separate thread as this one has become very long! Thanks.)

[reach4thelasers]

Hey Jim, What are the expected time-frames for a fix for the crashing problems? I've had 6 crashes this morning already and its only 9am. I hope that given the severity of this issue that we will get an expedited release and not the usual 6-8 weeks.....

[NinjaTrader_Jim]

Hello reach4thelasers,

These issues are a high priority. NinjaTrader 8 Release 7 was postponed to get these fixes in. These issues have been worked on, and there is a continuous build that I can offer you if you would like to test before Release 7 gets pushed.

Your input in testing the continuous build would be much appreciated. Please send me a message by email to platformsupport [at] ninjatrader [dot] com with the text "Attention Jim Cont Build" in body and the the thread URL.

Thanks!

[reach4thelasers]

Well its definitely a lot more stable. Its not crashed at all with normal use; however.... I have an issue. I can't switch any of my charts to GBPJPY at the moment....

Something has caused that instrument to get blocked. Its my favourite Forex pair so I look at it a lot. Right now, If I try to switch to GBPJPY my charts say "Loading..." permanently on the top left; it never actually loads; but the chart is still responsive and usable.

I decided to test with BollingerRainbowCrasher Indicator on linked charts using the same steps I outlined previously to see if I could reproduce the blocked Instrument.... However, this test caused all linked charts to lock-up same as before.

So it looks like the underlying root-cause remains unresolved; although it manifests itself less frequently.

[reach4thelasers]

Spoke too soon.... I've had three crashes in the last hour-and-a-half through normal use. Always when switching a linked chart.

[NinjaTrader_Jim]

Hello reach4thelasers,

Thanks for testing the Continuous Build.

As I mentioned, the build is a current snapshot and not a point release, so some drawbacks might be expected.

I will be forwarding your feedback to the development team. Could you reply back by email with your log and trace files and a synopsis of what you did to test and encounter the errors?

Please zip the log and trace files from the Continuous Build's platform folder (Documents/NinjaTrader 8/log and Documents/NinjaTrader 8/trace) and attach them to an email sent to platformsupport [at] ninjatrader [dot] com. You can reply to our email chain or include the text Attention Jim and the thread URL.

Thanks for the feedback!

[NinjaTrader_Brett]

Thanks for reporting back. Appreciate it.

There were actually several compounded issues. Rendering timing issues caused by heavy load -> fingers crossed resolved in custom build. You had another layer on top of that around switching instruments via the link control fairly quickly to cause a hang or deadlock. That is tracked in NTEIGHT-11681 and a fix for that not included in the current custom build.

The GBPJPY issue might be something different and Jim will take a look at your traces to try to help troubleshoot that issue.

Thanks for posting feedback.

[Alfred]

Spoke too soon.... I've had three crashes in the last hour-and-a-half through normal use. Always when switching a linked chart.

My finger dowsing says Ninja will resolve crashing issues by May 24....
counting down for a fix from 10 days the fingers say a resolution within 7 days...

....keep your fingers crossed....

...........

[manugarc]

How is it going? Is there some progress with these crashes?