Why Sterling Pro is not suitable for fully automated systems

C

cruisecontrol

It seems that a lot of prop firms these days use Sterling Pro (from sterlingtrader.com).

If you are considering joining a prop firm to run your fully automated system, make sure you find one that supports platforms other than Sterling. Even though Sterling has an API, it is not suitable for full auto systems. Here's why:

(1) Sterling cannot run continuously for more than 24 hours without crashing.
(2) Sterling cannot handle network disconnections without crashing.

That means you will not be able to leave your automated system alone, you will have to baby sit it constantly.

I contacted Sterling support about these issues, and here is the response I got:
Sterling needs a connection in order to work. If your connection goes down or the db does, it will make sterling crash. We run maintenance on our databases every night from around midnight to 3am or so. So, you would have to restart your app after the db comes back in the morning. If you want to run an automated system 24x7, you would not be able to on Sterling.
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Flabbergasted that this crashing was apparently not seen as an issue, I inquired further if there were any plans to fix it. The response:
Hi David,

It is Sterling’s process to shut down each d.b. over night. This will log you out.

We have no intentions of changing this process.
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OK, it's understandable that they need to do nightly maintenance. However being logged out is not the issue. Crashing is. One more try - I point this out again. The response:
YES. The database shuts down David. This is not an issue of something being broken. This is a nightly process.
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So there you have it folks, Sterling is not a robust platform for auto trading, and that will not change in the future.
 
Also, just for fun, here is a screenshot of what your desktop will look like in the morning if you leave Sterling open overnight.

SterlingFail.png
 
Are you trading US equities? If you are, you can't trade 24 hours anyway. You will be restricted by both the hours the exchanges are accepting orders and the order router you are connected with. The order routers are not live 24 hours either. That way they can do testing and upgrades.

Even if you write direct to a fix connection rather than an API, you would have this issue.
 
Of course you can't trade when the market is closed.

The point is that sterling won't stay open by itself, it needs to be manually restarted at least once a day. And if your network hiccups, then you need to manually restart it after each hiccup.

That means you need to be there watching it all the time, so it's not really an automatic system anymore. I.e. Sterling cannot be used for fully automated systems.
 
All I can say is poor design on the part of sterling if it crashes your system after logging you out. You can develop a heart beat/watch dog type of of script based system to take care of the restart issue in a planned fashion... but yes, its a lot of work and testing on your part...
 
Sterling doesn't crash the system, it crashes itself.

I guess you could develop some kind of system to automate restarting sterling. How would that work..

Constantly search for the error message box (using FindWindow() Win32 API), then when it appears, force terminate the sterling process. Restart it, wait a while, find the login box and emulate some user input to type in the login info. Maybe this is possible with AutoHotKey? Even if it is though, my god it would be such an ugly kludge.
 
You are comparing a broker Nuetral platform with a prime broker that offers their own routing and platform. Do you use IB and your happy with the rest of their offering?
 
Being broker neutral is not an excuse for being a buggy, crashing POS. Why would you even mention that?

Yes I use IB. I find them expensive but at least their stuff works reliably.
 
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