Originally posted by CalTrader
The points made by nitro are useful:
I have designed and written a system which identifies and stores the data noted by nitro as well as other data. Ours is written in VB, C++, and resides in Access and MS SQl Server 2000 databases: We also use the Micrsoft OLAP solution - SQL server analysis services. This was recently ported to the .Net environment - quite easily I might add. All of our new development has switched to .NET although we are still considering a switch to MySQL and Linux systems: thus far we have ruled it out unless MS get more onerous on their licensing fees.
Generally the most important information we want to gather on each trade - beyond the basic numbers associated with the position - is related to the data that indicated an entry point for the position. We do gather related information: as Niro said, ""TICK, TRIN, TIKI and spoos/PREM at time of trade, perhaps an Index."". We also compare our model signals at the time of the entry and exit.
PHP and MySQl works very well. Considering the licensing costs these are very attractive relative to Microsoft. The tradeoff is the development time and integration costs which dont always weight in Microsofts favor ......