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Log of Changes and Improvements to Sierra Chart

This list contains major items of development, and changes and additions which users need to be informed about.

This is not a comprehensive changes and additions log. And it should never be relied upon for such. It only represents a very small percentage of the actual development being performed every day. The vast majority of development is not documented here. Or receives, one small comment after it is all complete. There are not version notes for each version. The main Sierra Chart documentation is updated as needed relating to the changes and additions.

The maintenance of this page has mostly been abandoned by Sierra Chart development for many years due to the difficulty of maintaining it and because users can be incorrectly misled by or misinterpret notes that are made here. This does not change, the development of Sierra Chart which is very active every day and new releases are made nearly weekly or several times a week. The Sierra Chart project is still very active, with extensive development and it remains a very high quality software in the world. The engineering is at the very top of the world.

• 1371 Release Date: 2016-02-18

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  • Prevented a usually unnecessary reconnect to the data feed when closing the Data/Trade Service Settings window and also when Symbol Settings are received. Both of these are the result of recent changes.
  • Finished the development of the multithreaded and multiple connection DTC Historical Price Data Server. Only DTC Binary Encoding is currently supported. There are no plans to support other DTC encodings anytime soon. And as a general rule JSON encoding will not be supported with historical price data.
  • Added new Draw Style named: Custom Value At Y.
  • Added Point and Figure as a new Chart >> Chart Settings >> Bar Period Type. This is in addition to the study and provides efficient and very accurate Point and Figure bars.

• 1369 Release Date: 2016-02-13

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  • Corrected an integer overflow problem when rounding numbers to an increment when evaluating alert formulas. This may have affected the evaluation of alert formulas when the formula is using large numbers like Volume/Quantity numbers from the main price graph.
  • The Numbers Bars Calculated Values study now supports referencing another Intraday chart for the purpose of accessing chart data that uses different Volume Filtering compared to the chart it is applied to. This feature was added previously but some additional work has been done to it to complete it.

• 1368 Release Date: 2016-02-11

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  • Added the new input setting: "Include Fill Space In Developing Period Width" to the Volume by Price study. When this Input setting is set, the chart fill space is included into the Volume Profile width of a developing period, allowing more space for a developing Volume Profile to be displayed.
  • When saving a single study as a Study Collection, and it is not in Chart Region 1, it will be set to be in Chart Region 2 and the Chart Region height percentages are properly saved with the Study Collection.
  • Added the Automatic option to the Maximum Volume Bar Width Type Input with the Volume by Price study. It will select the period width until it exceeds the window width, at which point it will use the window width.
  • Added the Volume Bar Minimum Width in Chart Bars Input to the Volume by Price study.
  • Server-side OCO is now supported with the CQG Web API.
  • New input added to the Volume Weighted Average Price - Rolling and Moving Average - Rolling High Accuracy studies. Refer to the updated documentation for these studies.
  • New Global Settings >> Chart Trade Settings option: Disable Order Confirmations - Global.
  • The study Numbers Bars Average Volume/Price Graph study has been added.
  • Various low-level improvements and additions to the DTC Protocol implementation.

• 1366 Release Date: 2016-02-05

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  • Continued improvements to the DTC Protocol server. Corrected a problem with the DTC Protocol Server where when there is more than one client connected and they are subscribed to market depth data for the same symbol, the SymbolID in the market depth updates was not correct for additional clients beyond the first one.
  • Low-level changes/issues resolved relating to Tick Size, Value Format and Price Multipliers when using the Sierra Chart Exchange Data Feed. when Auto Set from Data Feed was checked in Chart >> Chart Settings, and using the Sierra Chart Exchange Data Feed, the Price Multipliers were incorrectly being set.
  • Continued improvements to New Spreadsheets.
  • Added new rollover date rule for ICE Brent crude oil futures.
  • The connection to TeleTrader is no longer performed through a separate DTC bridge program and is direct from the Sierra Chart main process.
  • The Relay Server has been removed (Global Settings >> Data/Trade Service Settings >> SC Server Settings) and has been replaced.
    
    If you have been using the Relay Server, for the same functionality you need to use the DTC Protocol Server and send a LOGIN_REQUEST message to put the connection into Relay Server Mode. Refer to the updated Relay Server documentation for specific instructions.

• 1364 Release Date: 2016-01-30

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  • Corrected a problem with the Initial Balance study not working on Mondays when the Initial Balance Type is Daily and the time range overlaps midnight.
  • Corrected another price mapping problem from the prior release that existed under certain conditions with the Recent Bid/Ask Volume and Current Traded Bid/Ask/Total Volume market data columns.

• 1362 Release Date: 2016-01-30

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  • Added the General Settings >> Subscribe Real-time Data and Download Historical Data During Scan option. When this is enabled, real-time data will be subscribed to and historical data will be downloaded for symbols that are being scanned when using the Scanning functionality.
  • Support for unbundled CME trade data from the CTS T4 trading service. There is currently not an option for this so the CME data from CTS will always be processed as unbundled but an option will be added soon.
  • Solved a price mapping problem from a recent release that existed under certain conditions and with certain values with the Recent Bid/Ask Volume and Current Traded Bid/Ask/Total Volume market data columns.
  • Resolved some small potential issues when submitting an order for a different Symbol or Trade account from ACSIL.
  • In the DTC Protocol Server, the Require TLS (transport layer security) is now supported in properly implemented. When this is enabled, the connection will be encrypted and only an encrypted connection will work. TLS version 1.2 should be used when connecting to the DTC Protocol Server when using TLS.

• 1360 Release Date: 2016-01-27

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  • There is a new option Settings >> Auto Set Alert Text Column Width on the Alert Manager. Toggling this off will prevent the Alert Text column from being automatically sized.
  • Corrected a problem with the CQG Web API trading interface where the price set for order modifications and for order updates for certain symbols (like Silver) was incorrect.
  • Added new ACSIL functions: sc.TimeStringToSCDateTime and sc.IsDateTimeContainedInBarIndex. The documentation will be updated.

• 1359 Release Date: 2016-01-27

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  • Corrected a problem with the CQG Web API trading interface where the price set for submitted orders for certain symbols like silver was incorrect.
  • Other low-level improvements.

• 1358 Release Date: 2016-01-23

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  • Continued performance improvements with New Spreadsheets.
  • Corrected a problem with the TeleTrader data service where when a symbol contains more than two delimiters, it is now properly parsed rather than giving a symbol error.
  • The Trade Account field is now set from open orders sent by IB Trader Workstation.
  • Other low-level improvements.

• 1355 Release Date: 2016-01-16

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  • Corrected problem with New Spreadsheets where when pasting a formula into a cell, the formula result may have been incorrect until the cell was recalculated.
  • Continued performance improvements with New Spreadsheets.
  • Changes to Automated Trade Management where Market orders are not attempted to be canceled when orders are set to be canceled on entries, reversals, and exits because market orders cannot be expected to be canceled. Therefore, market orders are considered in calculations of working orders when combined with the current Trade Position Quantity, even if the variables to cancel orders have been set to TRUE/Yes. This functionality still requires testing. An automated trading system needs to be tested with this version and higher in Trade Simulation Mode to verify it will function correctly. Although we see no reason why any changes to an automated trading system would be necessary. The changes done are to ensure that automated trading works more safely since market orders cannot be expected to be successfully canceled under usual conditions.
  • Added Average Price for Bar study which is meant to normally be used as a hidden study and allow other studies to be based on it to use these average prices as necessary.

• 1353 Release Date: 2016-01-12

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  • There are now separate Subgraph color settings for the evening session Volume Profile for the Volume by Price study when separate day and evening session Volume Profiles are set to display for a 1 Day period.
  • Corrected a problem with the Daily OHLC study from a recent release.
  • Continued performance improvements with New Spreadsheets. The GetCorrespondingMatch function has been fully implemented. Additional performance improvements are still being worked on.
  • Corrected a problem when using the Point and Figure XO Graph Draw Type for Reversal bars. The X and O columns now alternate.

• 1352 Release Date: 2016-01-10

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  • Corrected a problem where a Trade Order Error - IB error: Order rejected - reason:No such order. message would display when canceling the parent order of 2 server managed Attached Orders. This error message has always been harmless but now it will no longer display because there is no attempt by Sierra Chart to cancel these Server managed Attached Orders.
  • Corrected a problem from the prior release with the SierraChart.h related files which would cause a compiler error.
  • Added the Vortex study.
  • Adding support for the Numbers Bars Calculated Values study to directly reference another chart to use different volume filtering. The implementation of this is still in progress.

• 1350 Release Date: 2016-01-08

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  • Continued improvements with reduction of calculation speeds for New Spreadsheets. Added a new function to replace using INDEX and MATCH: GetCorrespondingMatch. This function reduces calculation time by 96%. The MATCH function will also be optimized in the calculation time reduced for it as well in a future release. However, this new function will give the greatest performance improvements. Not all of the functionality of this new function is implemented yet but will be in the next release which will be out by January 9.
  • Trade Activity Log timestamps now use accurate milliseconds.
  • Automated trades now include the the chart bars starting Date-Time when they are logged to the Trade Activity Log. This Date-Time is in the "Order Action Source" text.
  • Corrected a problem with incorrect drawn box sizes with the Point and Figure study.
  • Corrected a problem involving Chart Linking for studies where when a study is working with memory pointers, there could be an exception which occurs when studies are removed or a Chartbook is closed which causes unstable behavior.

• 1347 Release Date: 2016-01-01

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  • Added new Moving Average-Rolling High Accuracy study. There still are some refinements being made to this study. This is only the initial version.
  • Added the Window >> Hide Window command to hide a chart window. The chart window will still be listed on the CW menu and can be selected and made visible from that menu.
  • Added Seconds as a choice for the Time Period Type for Fixed Time Input with the Volume by Price study and other studies supporting this Input type.

• 1346 Release Date: 2015-12-30

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  • Reduced time to load Intraday data by approximately 17%. Some users may experience more of a time reduction.
  • More performance improvements to New Spreadsheets. There are more performance improvements being worked on still, including optimization of the MATCH function.

• 1344 Release Date: 2015-12-25

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  • Added new setting to the Interactive Brokers Trading Service settings: Maximum Historical Intraday Days to Download Limit. This is the maximum number of days to download when downloading historical Intraday data from Interactive Brokers directly. This is used to prevent very long downloads when the common Maximum Historical Intraday Days to Download settings in Global Settings >> Data/Trade Service Settings have higher values which are acceptable for other sources of historical data but not acceptable for Interactive Brokers.
  • Added new order status codes and text strings to differentiate between pending child orders which are held on the Client-side or the Server side. Due to this change, there is now a new order status code for child orders. This affects existing compiled automated trading systems in this version and higher. If your automated trading system relies upon the s_SCTradeOrder::OrderStatusCode variable, then it needs to be recompiled on this version or higher to function properly.
  • Various other low-level improvements and issues resolved.
  • Added new Price statistics calculations to the Volume by Price study. These are separate Subgraphs which need to be set to a visible Draw Style and they need to be enabled with the Calculate Mean Price and Standard Deviation Bands study Input.

• 1342 Release Date: 2015-12-20

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  • Corrected a problem with the Candlesticks Pattern Finder study when adding more than one instance of it to the same chart. Added a Display Above Candles Input to this study.
  • We believe we have resolved an intermittent problem which has been reported where a new Trade Position that gets established becomes zero/cleared in Sierra Chart after about 10 seconds when using the Interactive Brokers trading service. The underlying problem with this has to do with the complex and insufficiently designed API of the Interactive Brokers Trader Workstation which requires rather complex code to handle Positions for futures and multiples accounts. Still the way that this is handled is not entirely reliable when an Interactive Brokers account has multiple accounts because it is not possible to make it entirely reliable.

• 1341 Release Date: 2015-12-17

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  • Fixed a performance issue when copying Chart Drawings from one chart to another which could cause continuous redrawing if a Chart Drawing was not displayed on the destination chart because it was off the visible window.
  • Continued improvements to the Find Symbol window which include automatically requesting Symbol Settings if they are missing and refreshing the list of symbols when the Symbol Settings are received.
  • Corrected a problem with the DTC Protocol server where simulated orders were not being returned for an open orders request, when the DTC Client set the Trade Mode to Simulated or Demo.
  • Small performance improvements to New Spreadsheets.

• 1338 Release Date: 2015-12-11

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  • When a Quote Board is set to be always visible, symbol linking to charts now works with the Chartbook that is currently visible.
  • Corrected a problem with the ACSIL functions sc.BuyOrder and sc.SellOrder when submitting an order for a different Symbol or Trade Account compared to the chart the trading study is applied to. There was a problem with the comparison of the symbol where if there was a match at the beginning, they would be considered the same symbol and that is not correct. The result of this was that the orders were being submitted for the symbol of the chart even though a different symbol was specified in the s_SCNewOrder data structure.

• 1337 Release Date: 2015-12-10

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  • Volume data from Interactive Brokers for US stocks is now multiplied by 100 to maintain consistency with the Sierra Chart Historical Data service volume values. Also, in some early revisions of 1335 volume data for symbols other than stock symbols have their Volume data incorrectly multiplied by 100. This has been corrected.
  • For users of the Sierra Chart Exchange Data Feed, there is now a low bandwidth option to reduce the amount of bandwidth required for the data feed. This option is in Global Settings >> Data/Trade Service Settings >> SC Server Settings. It is named Use Low Bandwidth for DTC Real-time Data.
  • Added support for searching for stock symbols in the Find Symbol window when using the Sierra Chart Exchange Data Feed and when your account has activated the stock exchange being searched.
  • Some low-level improvements to the Find Symbol window. One improvement is that when the Global Symbol Settings are updated and the Find Symbol window is open, it will automatically update with the updated symbols.
  • Corrected a problem where an exception would occur when using ACSIL sc.BuyOrder or sc.SellOrder functions to submit an order for a different Symbol or Trade Account compared to the chart the trading study is applied to.
  • Corrected a small issue with the Zig Zag study time duration calculations and the ACSIL sc.UseTool function.
  • When using the TD Ameritrade trading service, and your TD Ameritrade username has multiple accounts on it, there is currently a problem where TD Ameritrade does not provide order updates for working orders other than on the main account. This version implements a workaround to this so that the working orders receive updates. The updates will not occur any sooner than at five second intervals.

• 1335 Release Date: 2015-12-03

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  • Corrected some issues which arose in the last two releases related to remote searching for symbols with the Find Symbol window. The Find Symbol window now again supports searching for spreads and LME futures contracts with the CTS T4 Trading platform service.

• 1333 Release Date: 2015-12-03

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  • Improvements to the Point and Figure Chart study. There are now new inputs to select the High and Low values used from the underlying chart bars. The Box Size input is now an integer value which is the number of ticks rather than the actual value. A tick is based on the chart Tick Size setting. The Box Size input is automatically updated for existing instances of the study.
  • Small optimization for the Interactive Brokers Trading service for mapping numeric contract identifiers to symbols.
  • Improvements to the Find Symbol window to support searching for symbols when using the TeleTrader service.
  • Corrected some issues with the Open File dialog window from a recent release.

• 1332 Release Date: 2015-12-01

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  • The OHLC Ray Drawing Tool will allow a different color/style/width for the Open/High/Low/Close levels.
  • Ongoing enhancements to the Find Symbol Window to improve getting spread symbols from the remote server and also perform searches for stock symbols. This functionality is still under development. At the moment, it is not possible to get spread symbols when using the CTS T4 trading service or to search for symbols when using TeleTrader. These limitations will be removed with a new release later today.

• 1331 Release Date: 2015-11-30

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  • For the Ellipse drawing tool a new option has been added: Second Point Is Radius. This option combined with the First Point Is Center option now allow for the easy drawing of a circle from the center to the radius.
  • Added new study named Cumulative Adjusted Value which accumulates a bias adjusted input. This can be used to form the Adjusted Cumulative Tick when applied to a TICK-NYSE chart.
  • Low-level improvements to the Time Line study. Corrected a problem arising in a recent release with the Time Line study.
  • Improved the determination of the symbol for a Trade Order and Trade Position when using the Interactive Brokers trading service. Additionally, we have determined that this cannot be done reliably for historical order fills from Interactive Brokers. So there is unreliable matching of historical order fills which are downloaded from TWS, to a particular symbol.
  • Added support for simulated trading using the DTC Protocol Server and also for the new ACSIL functionality for trading a symbol and/or account different than the chart the automated trading study is applied to.
  • Added new study Subgraph Draw Styles named Fill Rect To Zero and Trans. Fill Rect To Zero.
  • Improvements to the File Open/Save window used for opening chart data files, Chartbooks, and Spreadsheets.
  • Corrected a problem from a recent release where market data requests for real-time data for stocks were not being routed correctly when using the Sierra Chart Exchange Data Feed. The result of this is that real-time market data updates would not be received for stocks. This is now resolved. This issue only applied to the Sierra Chart Exchange Data Feed and when using the US Equities or BATS exchanges.

• 1329 Release Date: 2015-11-20

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  • Corrected a problem with the symbol formatting for Trade Positions data for 2016 futures symbols when using the Interactive Brokers Trading service. For complete details, refer to this Support Board thread. This is an important update for Interactive Brokers users.

• 1328 Release Date: 2015-11-18

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  • Added the Spreadsheet function MOSTRECENTNONZEROVALUE.
  • Ensured that after connecting to the data feed, that the ACSIL variable sc.DownloadingHistoricalData is set to 1 before the chart studies are calculated when a Intraday chart has to download data. This ensures that automated trading does not take place until after the new data has been downloaded in the chart. Also corrected an apparent but probably insignificant problem with the updating of the Numbers Bars Pullback data which should not be done during a historical data download.
  • The Control Bar / ToolBar can now be attached to a Trade DOM window through the Window >> ToolBars >> ToolBar 1-8. You can add the Watchlist control item to the Control Bar for easily changing the symbol on a Trade DOM.
  • Added the following new ACSIL members:
    • sc.LoadChartDataByDateRange
    • sc.ChartDataStartDate
    • sc.ChartDataEndDate
  • The Load Weekend Data Chart Settings option now again considers the actual trading day date of a chart bar. If the trading day date is in the next day based upon the Session Times, and this day is not a Saturday or Sunday it will still be loaded in the chart even if the bar starts on a Sunday.
  • Added rectangle around Date-Time box displayed on the timescale when using the Chart Values tool.

• 1324 Release Date: 2015-11-11

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  • Can now control the first Date and Time of order fills to load in a chart or Trade DOM when it is maintaining a Trades list. This is very useful for the Order Fill Calculated Trade Position data feature to start calculating the Trade Position data from a specific Date-Time. This setting is in Chart >> Chart Settings >> Trading.
  • Corrected another problem from a recent release with historical data downloading for some symbols when using the SC Historical Data Service. This arose with support for the new SC Data - All Services service.
  • Corrected a problem with the interpretation of the Symbol from the Trade Position data from Interactive Brokers to allow for differences with the Currency and Multiplier for some future symbols like the DAX.
  • For the Spreadsheet System for Alert study and the Spreadsheet System for Trading study, added a new option to the Column K-Z Alert inputs named "Alert Disabled". When this is selected, the formula column will not generate an alert sound or add a message to the Window >> Alerts Manager >> Alerts Log.
  • The coloring of the Profit/Loss Column on the Chart/Trade DOM has been changed. By default, the numbers use the coloring of the values scale. When a Position has a profit, only those profit values are colored from the entry price to the level of the current price. When a Position has a loss, only those loss values are colored from the entry price to the level of the current price.
  • Added support in ACSIL for submitting orders using unmanaged automated trading that are for a different Symbol and/or Trade Account than the chart the trading study is applied to. The documentation is being worked on and will be located here.
  • Corrected a low-level problem associated with the System Notification message that possibly could cause under some conditions an exception. Corrected a problem when selecting Study Collections from the main menu when there are detached charts and there are no charts open in the main MDI window.

• 1322 Release Date: 2015-11-07

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  • Corrected some issues arising from recent changes to unify data services into a single service which caused some data feed connections to not be made to some services and causing historical Daily data downloads to not occur.

• 1319 Release Date: 2015-11-05

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  • Removal of "Replay/BackTest" and "All Simulated" order activity sources. This was actually done earlier but was not previously mentioned.
  • Support for Ninja Trader brokerage using Rithmic has been added back.
  • Working on support for trading a Symbol and Trade Account different from the chart the trading study is on, when using ACSIL. This is still under development and not yet available.
  • Fixed an issue with the Horizontal Grid spacing.
  • Bitcoin data can now be accessed at the same time when using the SC Forex data and other services.
  • Added an option in Global Settings >> General Settings to enable and disable logging of Continuous Futures Contract Chart messages to the Message Log. The default setting is disabled. This greatly reduces the messages added when the option is disabled. Now that the Continuous Futures Contract feature has reached a stable state, this logging is no longer necessary by default.
  • Changes to Interactive Brokers Trading service Position handling for Financial Advisor accounts. Sierra Chart now uses the same model as normal IB accounts. Based on user feedback, this resolves problems with Position reporting for Financial Advisor accounts.

• 1316 Release Date: 2015-10-26

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  • Corrected some low-level issues with the updating of controls on the Trade Window related to recent changes to support Trade Window linking.
  • Removed unnecessary logging related to HTTP communication.
  • Continued development to support the Chart >> Chart Settings >> Invert Prices option. This option is still not yet fully implemented.