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Date/Time: Fri, 03 May 2024 10:23:13 +0000



Post From: Significant Lag past version 1958

[2019-07-29 22:44:35]
Sierra Chart Engineering - Posts: 104368
We have had a few reports since the release of version 1959 where users are reporting the user interface of Sierra Chart freezing and what would be considered poor performance. We were surprised by this because there was an important performance improvement in version 1959 which we think would have the opposite result.

However, it occurred to us what the actual problem is.

Version 1959 and higher have efficient and reliable internally generated timer events rather than relying upon the operating system, in order to drive various updates in the program. Charts are updated on a timer. This is called the Chart Update Interval:

General Settings Window: Chart Update Interval (Global Settings >> General Settings >> General >> Update Intervals)


The situation with freezing and poor performance inherently makes no sense from the perspective of how the timer events are now managed effective with 1959. They are very efficient.

They are managed in a very different way though. And in a very efficient way. Every time a timer event is now generated, it is followed rather than potentially getting dropped like earlier versions. There was a dropping mechanism that existed before that was not very efficient but it may have resulted in more dropped events than you realize and instead now all of the timer events for charts are getting followed. However, a new timer event is not generated until one completes and the chart update interval elapses again. So there are no overlapping events any longer.

Therefore the solution to the problem is for you to increase the Chart Update Interval because you may be using too low of an interval based on the workload being presented from the Chartbooks.

We would expect most users not to have a problem unless they are using too low of a Chart Update Interval.

So you really have to set the Chart Update Interval to a more true setting which is reasonable. 10 ms is far too low if you are using that. And even 500 ms based on the work load may be too low.

For example you could use 10 ms, and in older versions 90% of the events could be discarded. So therefore it defeats the purpose of using to low of an interval and you create the exact opposite problem where there is wasted processing. This is something that we are intimately familiar with, and we see the fault of users using too low of an interval. However, users will disregard what we say to them in some cases. And we are well aware of the problem of using too low of a Chart Update Interval. It defeats the purpose.


If you have a problem you will need to increase the Chart Update Interval to a higher more reasonable setting.

With the new timer mechanism, there are no dropped events. But there are also the same time no overlapping or excessive events being generated.

So in the end increase your Chart Update Interval. There is *not* a problem in the new versions with performance. Instead the new version is revealing that you are using too low of an update interval, if you notice freezing or poor performance, and previously events were getting dropped.

If you are using 500 ms and you have a performance problem with 1959 or higher, you really need to take that up to a 1000 or higher. Because the simple fact is that you really are not getting 500 ms updates per chart. You are actually getting fewer updates. You may be getting updates every second or every two seconds.


Update: We realize that it is necessary for us to dynamically manage the Chart Update Interval and only use the setting as a hint. With versions prior to 1959, timer events which are accumulating in the message queue, are discarded. This no longer happens because of the structure of generating timer events. There are not any overlapping events. But if you have a lot of charts with a short update interval there can be very little chance for any user interaction with the interface. This is the basic problem. So we have to therefore dynamically increase the Chart Update Interval when this is sensed.
Sierra Chart Support - Engineering Level

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Date Time Of Last Edit: 2019-07-30 02:56:44