Oanda Plugin

[willk]

Hi Avery,

Firstly, I'd like to make a complaint with regards to eSignal Support, I actually notified you guys that the API needed updating, and instead of any personal reply I just got notified via a blanket email that eSignal is not going to upgrade their plugin to support Oanda any further.

I then asked to be put in touch with someone from your Plugin area and was given an email address that bounces.

I’ve been using eSignal and Oanda for a couple of years now and it's worked great. This is my livelihood I trade professionally through eSignal with Oanda and is my only source of income. From what I can see it’s a pretty small job to upgrade the existing oanda plugin with the new API protocols, a few fairly minor changes, wouldn’t be more than a day or two’s work and would cost less than the amount I spend in 6-8 months with eSignal, and I cannot believe I’m the only one using it.

Note also that the email I received suggested the Oanda plugin won’t function on 31 Dec 2010, while Oanda state they are retiring the old protocols on Feb 1 2011.

I find it fairly astounding that within a few days of my email to your team a management decision like killing the Oanda Plugin was made.

Can you please confirm that the Oanda plugin will work until Feb 1? Secondly can you please investigate the possibility of updating the plugin instead of making a quick decision not to bother with it?

Oanda is one of the biggest Forex trading platforms in the world and there are NO other options as complete as eSignal to both backtest and automate trading for it. Failure to get a large number of people using it comes down to a complete lack of marketing or even a tutorial on how to do it aimed at Oanda users.

Thanks,
- Will Kruss

[ScottJ]

Hi,

Yes, the existing integration should work until Oanda places the new API protocols into production as of Feb 1, 2011. If that date gets pushed, the integration should continue to function as it does today.

In terms of why we've elected not to code to their new API, it's really a matter of time, resources and demand. We have less than 10 users with the Oanda integration and all our engineering resources are being utilized as we try to wrap-up the v11 release for January. If the integration was mid-year, there would have been a higher likelihood that we would have put the nec resources on this project, even with such light demand.

Unfortunately, time is working against us and there's simply not an available resource to pull this off in time.

Thanks.

[willk]

Hi Scott,

That's pretty disappointing, I do understand resources, but I believe it's only a couple of days work for the programmer who originally coded the plugin, and if you have 10 users who dump eSignal that would equate to a much greater loss.

Any chance of reconsidering, after all you have until Feb? If not, can you release the source code to the plugin so it can be updated outside of your resources?

Thanks,
- Will

[ScottJ]

Hi,

From what I understand, it's more than just a few days worth of work and the work wouldn't be in just the plug-in. Other parts of our code would need to be updated. As a result of those inter-dependencies, we don't make our code base available for open source use.

We typically don't like to discontinue any of our active and ongoing partnerships (like the Oanda integration) but in this case, we simply couldn't pull resources to make it happen in the given timeframe.

Thanks.