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Craig wrote:
> I had a good experience with DOS ACCESS for about a year
> or so, and then I had major problems. One day, I just
> couldn't connect to their database anymore when I dialed
> up. They recommended I buy a new modem because I supposedly
> had what they call "broken teeth". Even though everything
> else I use the modem for functioned OK, they still insisted
> it was a hardware problem on my end. Well, the new modem
> didn't work out and I still couldn't log on. I couldn't
> figure out why and neither could they, although Prophet has
> a history of denial about it's own problems that it realizes
> it always had, IMHO. <SNIP>
Even though we have a real-time data feed, we have been downloading "All
Markets" EOD futures data from Prophet's Web site the past two years,
because TradeStation has no provision to create back-adjusted continuous
futures contract files. (I recently have written software that creates them
automatically from data in the Omega Server database.)
There are serious errors in Prophet's data. A long time ago we noticed
silver futures open, high, low and closing prices were the same each day for
months. I asked them about the problem. They said they knew about it, but
they had much more serious problems to worry about. They never sent a fix.
I asked them for the contract roll-over rules they follow. They sent rules,
but we have found they don't follow them. They told us they roll after
three days of higher open interest in a new contract, but we have found they
roll on contract expiration dates. That is a bad time to roll, because open
interest in an old contract is very low then.
A couple months ago we noticed a few days of data for last May is missing in
all their files. We have emailed and telephoned them many times since
trying to get a patch. They promised several times to send one, but didn't.
Last Friday they sent two huge files they said would have to be processed in
sequence to solve the problem. I started the first one running Friday
evening. It is now Tuesday morning. It is still running.
Their software is awful. Their user interface is terrible. I can't imagine
how they can make processing take so long. Nightly updates run for hours.
Several files are being updated, but even so, I can't imagine why the
process takes so long. My own software creates years of back-adjusted EOD
futures contract data in seconds. It even creates extremely long back-
adjusted intraday futures files very quickly (35 seconds a year for back-
adjusted 15-min bar data on Pentium/90 computer, for instance). There is no
need for their processing to take so long.
-Bob Brickey
Scientific Approaches
sci@xxxxxxxxxx
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