Executing Initialize() and Not Responding

[dave1992]

Hi,

Sorry for the exasperated tone, but I'm find that executing Initialize really is the bane of my experience with Ninja.

I can accept the fact that it gets run to get dialog boxes up for strategy selection, even if I don't agree with that design. If you have 20 strategies that do a lot in the initializes, it just takes too long - 10-30, secs every time, and the whole of Ninja hangs with "not responding" while it does it.

What I find much worse though, is that Initialize gets run at the end of strategy analyzing, with the same 10-30 secs not responding before the results come up. As if that wasn't bad enough, it appears to get re-run if you select a different instrument row in the result set, and sometimes if you change tabs in that result set!

Please don't just tell me it's for 'internal reasons'. I'm finding strategy analyzing almost unworkable because I keep having to wait 30 secs for Ninja to respond every time I do something. Surely this design needs changing very soon?

thanks
Dave

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

Dave, what kind of routines are you using in Initialize()?

For NT 7 we've added OnStartUp() to handle using custom resources more efficient, as this would only be called once and not multiple times as the Initialize().

[dave1992]

OK, great, that looks like a good solution. Sorry I knew nothing about it, I don't get beta release emails anymore, and don't see the release notes anywhere. I don't particularly even notice the beta release announcements. Assuming they exist, perhaps they could be put in a beta7 announcements forum, or in the critical info one?

thanks
Dave

[dave1992]

Err, I take it all back. It appears that when I select a different instrument in a result set, the whole backtest is re-run for that instrument.

So I still have to wait 30 secs. What's going on?

thanks
Dave

[NinjaTrader_JoshP]

Dave,

When you switch to a different instrument you are rerunning the backtest. NT does not hold onto detailed information of the backtest in memory so it needs to rerun it so you can actually view anything about it.

[dave1992]

I'm astounded. I've got plenty of memory - can we have an option to keep it in memory - it's wasting a lot of my and my PC's time.

[NinjaTrader_JoshP]

dave1992,

Thank you for the suggestion. Please be aware that a majority of our customers use 32-bit machines and the maximum memory an application can use in a 32-bit environment is ~1.2GBs. If you run a backtest or optimization on several instruments for an extended period of time you can easily run out of 1.2GBs of RAM. When that happens there is no way to keep onto detailed information.

[dave1992]

Thanks Josh - that's why an option would be perfect. We have to move with the times eh? ;-)