Question about database and Bloomberg

[Andy Nguyen]

Dave,
If you have any good information about Bloomberg's RunManager product, let me know. We probably will bring in our BB sale guy but I want to hear something different from the sale pitch.
The preliminary info I have is that RunManager is a Bloomberg message quote parser like CMA's QuoteVision. Bloomberg is infamous when it comes to documentation so we want to have the right info before we purchase.

 

[oconnohd]

Hi All,

I, too, have a question concerning Bloomberg's data limits. I am currently creating a database that tracks certain stocks. For each stock, I am requesting numerous mneumonics. So, after opening and closing the database numerous times throughout the day, I get curious as to how much of my allotted "static" data is left.

Does anyone know if there is a tracker that updates how much data you can still use/how much you already have used?

Thanks!

KC

 

[satyag]

I know a little bit about how this system works. Let me put it this way, these limits are mainly to identify people misusing or abusing the api and effecting the servers and other clients. If you are requesting static fields again and again, bloomberg wants you to optimize that. To my knowledge, there is nothing like "alloted" usage. But there is a limit beyond which your usage will attract bloomberg's attention. This is not official but I believe anything under a million mnemonics per day is reasonable use.

Hi All,

I, too, have a question concerning Bloomberg's data limits. I am currently creating a database that tracks certain stocks. For each stock, I am requesting numerous mneumonics. So, after opening and closing the database numerous times throughout the day, I get curious as to how much of my allotted "static" data is left.

Does anyone know if there is a tracker that updates how much data you can still use/how much you already have used?

Thanks!

KC

 

[doug reich]

I don't know if you can pull the number automatically. We were getting a weird error during some development, and one of their helpdesk people read off some monthly and daily quota numbers and our current usage, although they didn't really explain what they meant. If you really want to know where you stand on these quantities, and you want to brave the "helpless" desk, you just might find out.

As I said, they didn't explain what the numbers meant nor what the consequences for exceeding them were.

Hi All,

I, too, have a question concerning Bloomberg's data limits. I am currently creating a database that tracks certain stocks. For each stock, I am requesting numerous mneumonics. So, after opening and closing the database numerous times throughout the day, I get curious as to how much of my allotted "static" data is left.

Does anyone know if there is a tracker that updates how much data you can still use/how much you already have used?

Thanks!

KC

 

[cofibreak]

I can see two things we could do to address some of the uncertainty from a data consumer point:

1. Keep track of the number of server hits you are making and catch spikes proactively.
2. In some cases, it is possible to send a single request to get data for multiple securities. This will probably count as a single hit.

BB also has a FTP solution, where you create a request file and put it in a designated location. Though the response is quite fast, this may not work for realtime scenarios.

 

[theVerveNY]

RunManager

Dave,
If you have any good information about Bloomberg's RunManager product, let me know. We probably will bring in our BB sale guy but I want to hear something different from the sale pitch.
The preliminary info I have is that RunManager is a Bloomberg message quote parser like CMA's QuoteVision. Bloomberg is infamous when it comes to documentation so we want to have the right info before we purchase.

Hi, Andy.

Unfortunately, I am not quite familiar with Bloomberg RunManager. Sorry, I can't help you there. I guess the BB sales guy will be your best bet.

Dave

 

[theVerveNY]

I know a little bit about how this system works. Let me put it this way, these limits are mainly to identify people misusing or abusing the api and effecting the servers and other clients. If you are requesting static fields again and again, bloomberg wants you to optimize that. To my knowledge, there is nothing like "alloted" usage. But there is a limit beyond which your usage will attract bloomberg's attention. This is not official but I believe anything under a million mnemonics per day is reasonable use.

Please be aware that the limits for the desktop are much lower than those for the server license. However, the objective of Bloomberg is the same for both and the tips for managing your API limits are also the same. Here are a few of the important ones:

1. Real-time requests are always preferred to repeated static requests. The reason for that is that a real-time subscription only entails a single header request (for the initial paint of real-time data) and a tick monitor request. After that point, tick updates are sent from the Bloomberg backend until you either desubscribe or disconnect. This is far much less taxing on the Bloomberg backend. To you this means less hits, as your daily hit total will only be increased by the total number of securities in the real-time request. The number of fields does not impact your hit total on a real-time request. However, for a static request, your hit total will increase by the aggregate of each security/field pairing. For instance, if you make a static request that contains 10 securities and 5 fields, then that would be a total of 50 hits. Obviously, if you then continue to make this same static request (also called polling), it will be 50 hits each time it is sent out.
2. If you hit your daily limit you will receive a -4001 error code (if using C API), or the error message "#N/A Dly Lmt". If you hit your monthly limit, the error code will be -4002 or an error message of "#N/A Mth Lmt" (ActiveX Data Control or BDx() functions in Excel). In the API for .NET, a DataLimitExceededException will be thrown. There is also a limit for the number of concurrent real-time subscriptions that can be made. It is measured in numbers of unique securities being subscribed to at any one time. If you surpass this, you will receive a -3001 error code.
   
3. The limits are not based on the number of function calls you make. Therefore, if you make s historical or subscribe type call that requests 10 securities and five fields at once, it will still be counted by the Bloomberg backend as 50 hits.

To address the FTP solution, as a side note. Cofibreak (great user name) is referring to Bloomberg's Data License product, which provides customers a way to obtain large volumes of static data within a file via FTP.

One final note concerning the data limits, I am not sure of the actual limit numbers for each product, but I am very sure that 1,000,000 mnemonics requested in one day would be far too many and put you over the daily limits for both products. To put it into perspective, there are approx. 25K valid mnemonics in the Bloomberg API data dictionary.

I hope this helps.

Dave

 

[bsteeves]

I have been using Bloomberg with excel for many years now and there is a quota to the number of times you can populate cells. I believe the monthly limit is 1,000,000 with the option to upgrade twice every month if need be. Once you exceed 1,000,000 you will receive the #n/A limit

 

[doug reich]

Since this thread first came up, I spent much more time looking at WAPI -- if you look around there, it explains what the different limits are on data use, and how you can minimize your hits by using the API calls wisely.

EDIT: They describe the limits and how to stay below them in the "Extended Rules and Usage Limits of the Bloomberg API" page in WAPI.

 

[Wallstyouth]

Microsoft has worked diligently to improve Excel 2007 for financial professionals to use to trade with and thru

"Processing power: Prior to the release of Microsoft Excel 2007, all spreadsheets were single threaded and could not take advantage of today's multi-core technology.

Spreadsheet size and memory limitations: Excel 2003 can have 256 columns by 64K rows and can use 1GB of memory. Excel 2007 can have 16K columns by 1M rows, but is still constrained by a 32-bit address space.

Microsoft Office Excel 2007: Microsoft has made significant improvements in Excel 2007 guaranteed to excite spreadsheets enthusiasts. Users can now create spreadsheets with up to 16,384 columns and 1,048,576 rows and benefit from expanded memory capabilities up to the maximum amount of memory addressable within 32-bits. Finally, Excel now includes a multi-threaded calculation engine. This means, that spreadsheets can maximize computational power. When running multi-core, multi-CPU, or hyper-threaded processes, linear improvements can be seen in performance, assuming parallelization of calculations.

Excel Services: Excel Services, part of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS), extends the capabilities of Excel 2007 by providing a server-side complement. Excel services provides the necessary components to share and maintain spreadsheets in a secure manner.

We use the Equis / QuoteCenter / Reuters DDE feed and pull 927 stocks into one Excel 2007 Spreadsheet in array format that uses only 12% to 20% cpu usage all day and as far as i can tell we don't get dropped quotes and get a lot of custom fields that help us create many different custom indicators (Beta, MoneyFlow, Volatility, MAvgs, Hi Lo Ranges, TradeCounts, Block Counts, Block Sums, etc...

Other shops; eSig, DTN, etc... killed our cpu with only 500 stocks !!...

We pull 927 unique stock records with 9 columns each into SQL Server every 1 minute during the day using a VBA windows timer and SQL Server DTS package and then allow SQL Server to do the Stored Procs analysis to feed data to us about what is going on in equity indexes, sectors, etc to better understand how to trade the equity futures and in showing the weakness or strengths in groups of tradeable Correlated Stock Baskets
​

 

[Stock]

Does anyone happend to know is Acess can run real time function or download real-time data directly from Bloomberg ? I am using Excel to do this right now, but seems Excel has limit on the capacity. In thinking about moving the data to Acess...I couldn't figure out how to run all the functions now on Excel on Acess??

Thanks a lot.:smt100:smt100

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