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Post by ablrate on Nov 16, 2020 16:47:27 GMT
They do seem to be rather slow to implement the basic useful features that were present in the old SM, e.g. sorting and more records per page. These were recognised failures that were promised on day one, but it's been over a month now and very little has been changed since the first release. The addition of the 3 letter ticker was welcome, but I haven't noticed any other improvements. On balance I'd still prefer the old SM. It's a very complex bit of kit, so the development is considered... with lots of testing. There is a release out in the next week, with others coming.
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Post by Ace on Nov 16, 2020 17:34:58 GMT
They do seem to be rather slow to implement the basic useful features that were present in the old SM, e.g. sorting and more records per page. These were recognised failures that were promised on day one, but it's been over a month now and very little has been changed since the first release. The addition of the 3 letter ticker was welcome, but I haven't noticed any other improvements. On balance I'd still prefer the old SM. It's a very complex bit of kit, so the development is considered... with lots of testing. There is a release out in the next week, with others coming. I'm sorry, but as someone with 35 years software engineering experience, I don't buy that implementing these basic features on top of the existing system is in any way complicated. I could have bought that you simply don't consider it a high enough priority right now, but not that it would take more than a couple of days to implement.
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Post by ladywhitenap on Nov 16, 2020 17:47:34 GMT
It's a very complex bit of kit, so the development is considered... with lots of testing. There is a release out in the next week, with others coming. I'm sorry, but as someone with 35 years software engineering experience, I don't buy that implementing these basic features on top of the existing system is in any way complicated. I could have bought that you simply don't consider it a high enough priority right now, but not that it would take more than a couple of days to implement. Agreed AceThe original spec for the designers should have been to implement at the very least everything that the previous SM could do and then build on the new requirements Seems there has been little or no independent design review either as distinct from functional testing. To trip over rounding errors especially after early version of the SM suffering a similar problem is appalling. LW
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sapphire
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Post by sapphire on Nov 16, 2020 18:05:27 GMT
I'm sorry, but as someone with 35 years software engineering experience, I don't buy that implementing these basic features on top of the existing system is in any way complicated. I could have bought that you simply don't consider it a high enough priority right now, but not that it would take more than a couple of days to implement. Agreed Ace The original spec for the designers should have been to implement at the very least everything that the previous SM could do and then build on the new requirements Seems there has been little or no independent design review either as distinct from functional testing. To trip over rounding errors especially after early version of the SM suffering a similar problem is appalling. LW In their response dated 19th May 20 ablrate ( link ) had stated "ASMX is being built by the guys who built technology for the LSE, at IG Group they were responsible for all global exchanges, market access and Forex IT. At Cantor, one of the developers was head of their IT department and has a degree in Control Theory. They are probably the best developers I have ever come across in knowledge and innovation and I would suggest there are few better in financial exchanges." Its disappointing that ablrate have not been able to harness the "best developers" to deliver a system without significant gaps. I also seem to remember it being mentioned that ablrate had spent a significant sum (around £1M?) on developing ASMX. As there have been significant gaps identified by the user community in what has been delivered so far, I wonder how much more needs to be spent to address these gaps and if there is the budget and inclination to do so in the near future.
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boundah
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Post by boundah on Nov 17, 2020 18:14:08 GMT
OK, I'll be a dissenting voice here. I think the new system works pretty well. Even Microsoft etc normally put out some buggy stuff then refine it, so I think we need to cut ABL some slack and let them work through the feedback.
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Post by Ace on Nov 17, 2020 21:31:37 GMT
OK, I'll be a dissenting voice here. I think the new system works pretty well. Even Microsoft etc normally put out some buggy stuff then refine it, so I think we need to cut ABL some slack and let them work through the feedback. I don't disagree with that, but I do feel that over a month is enough slack to get some easy basic features sorted that were present in the old SM
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Post by Badly Drawn Stickman on Nov 17, 2020 21:40:24 GMT
OK, I'll be a dissenting voice here. I think the new system works pretty well. Even Microsoft etc normally put out some buggy stuff then refine it, so I think we need to cut ABL some slack and let them work through the feedback. I suspect if the old SM was reinstated tomorrow there would be a lot of complaining about how doing a trade takes an absolute age compared to this version along with a lot of other unflattering comparisons. Its just how the World works that negatives trump positives. I'm relatively neutral, would like some alterations but in the short term I will happily devise ways to make it work for me. So I will take the middle ground, I suspect its quite crowded in reality.
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Post by ablrate on Nov 18, 2020 10:14:00 GMT
OK, I'll be a dissenting voice here. I think the new system works pretty well. Even Microsoft etc normally put out some buggy stuff then refine it, so I think we need to cut ABL some slack and let them work through the feedback. I don't disagree with that, but I do feel that over a month is enough slack to get some easy basic features sorted that were present in the old SM There is a new release hopefully today, but very little is easy or basic when it comes to a system like this.
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eeyore
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Post by eeyore on Nov 18, 2020 10:24:45 GMT
I don't disagree with that, but I do feel that over a month is enough slack to get some easy basic features sorted that were present in the old SM There is a new release hopefully today, but very little is easy or basic when it comes to a system like this. As someone else with experience in IT management, that sort of statement makes me very worried!
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Post by p2pgirl on Nov 18, 2020 11:09:40 GMT
There is a new release hopefully today, but very little is easy or basic when it comes to a system like this. As someone else with experience in IT management, that sort of statement makes me very worried! Why would it? Is a live system dealing with millions of funds for hundreds of investors ever going to be simple? Data integrity, security, data scaling, performance all add come at a cost. And I assume that the development team is relatively small.
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Post by Ace on Nov 18, 2020 11:39:38 GMT
As someone else with experience in IT management, that sort of statement makes me very worried! Why would it? Is a live system dealing with millions of funds for hundreds of investors ever going to be simple? Data integrity, security, data scaling, performance all add come at a cost. And I assume that the development team is relatively small. Because we weren't talking about any of those potentially complex issues. We were taking about minor changes to the way that data is displayed to the user (sorting and more records per page). These should be completely divorced from the backend complexities in a well designed system, and therefore have been relatively trivial to implement. This would have made a step change in the usability and would have restored some features that were present in the previous SM.
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blender
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Post by blender on Nov 18, 2020 12:55:13 GMT
Why would it? Is a live system dealing with millions of funds for hundreds of investors ever going to be simple? Data integrity, security, data scaling, performance all add come at a cost. And I assume that the development team is relatively small. Because we weren't talking about any of those potentially complex issues. We were taking about minor changes to the way that data is displayed to the user (sorting and more records per page). These should be completely divorced from the backend complexities in a well designed system, and therefore have been relatively trivial to implement. This would have made a step change in the usability and would have restored some features that were present in the previous SM. Quite. In my ignorance of the detail I agree. All I want them to do is to restore the facility to sort a table by the contents of its columns. Something I happily used to do on the Ablrate SM, and on databases in Access or Excel. It's just a display issue with no consequences for the integrity of the data, aiui. And it's an existing functionality lost, not a fancy new request. Must have made a poor choice for ASMX.
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Post by p2pgirl on Nov 18, 2020 14:17:01 GMT
Because we weren't talking about any of those potentially complex issues. We were taking about minor changes to the way that data is displayed to the user (sorting and more records per page). These should be completely divorced from the backend complexities in a well designed system, and therefore have been relatively trivial to implement. This would have made a step change in the usability and would have restored some features that were present in the previous SM. We can probably debate this at length as it is a passion of mine . I hate it when people tell me that the change is easy so why don't we just go ahead and do it (for the products that I manage). Nothing is ever as easy as it is in a hypothetical perfect world. We don't know what constraints they are operating in, so for instance is the page size restricted for a reason such as performance. If they change it do they need to do additional performance testing. What impact does a changed page size have on their automation frameworks etc. We also don't know what tradeoffs they'd have to make to change the page size i.e. what would be delayed to prioritize this change ... maybe if we understood what we'd have to sacrifice, we'd be less concerned about it. A better request is for us to ask to have visibility of their roadmap/backlog and allow us to vote on priorities (a tool such as uservoice).
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Post by Ace on Nov 18, 2020 14:57:05 GMT
Because we weren't talking about any of those potentially complex issues. We were taking about minor changes to the way that data is displayed to the user (sorting and more records per page). These should be completely divorced from the backend complexities in a well designed system, and therefore have been relatively trivial to implement. This would have made a step change in the usability and would have restored some features that were present in the previous SM. We can probably debate this at length as it is a passion of mine . I hate it when people tell me that the change is easy so why don't we just go ahead and do it (for the products that I manage). Nothing is ever as easy as it is in a hypothetical perfect world. We don't know what constraints they are operating in, so for instance is the page size restricted for a reason such as performance. If they change it do they need to do additional performance testing. What impact does a changed page size have on their automation frameworks etc. We also don't know what tradeoffs they'd have to make to change the page size i.e. what would be delayed to prioritize this change ... maybe if we understood what we'd have to sacrifice, we'd be less concerned about it. A better request is for us to ask to have visibility of their roadmap/backlog and allow us to vote on priorities (a tool such as uservoice). I do take your points as I've been in the same position as you many times. However, in this case I do believe that the changes being requested to reinstate the functionality that was present in the old SM GUI are trivial. I was being generous when I suggested it could take a couple of days, and I was including time for testing. Sure, a few more days would be needed for management approval and for release procedures to be followed, but over a month! As I said before, I could have understood it if they said the reason was that they didn't have the money or staff available due to higher priorities, but they didn't. Instead, they implied that the reason it hadn't been done yet was that it was complex, which I just can't buy. I totally agree that a roadmap would be a good idea to manage expectations, which is why I asked for one many weeks ago.
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eeyore
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Post by eeyore on Nov 18, 2020 18:06:00 GMT
We can probably debate this at length as it is a passion of mine . I hate it when people tell me that the change is easy so why don't we just go ahead and do it (for the products that I manage). Nothing is ever as easy as it is in a hypothetical perfect world. ....... I don't disagree with you - it's a viewpoint I entirely share. [That takes me back over thirty years - anyone care to swap tales of change control systems?] What ruffled my feathers in that original ABLrate post was that it reflected the tone of a patronising developer to an exasperated client. But ABLrate is the client and the developer is some prestigious, highly-experienced outfit with a track-record of financial systems. I've come to expect better of ABLrate in their explanations; why be so defensive and use such a pathetic excuse? But as a buy-and-hold investor, I rarely look at the secondary market and have yet to investigate this new system.
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