Quotelf Omega: Frequently Asked Questions

Supported software

Common Questions about

What's the monthly cost for using Quotelf? - The great advantage of using Quotelf is that you don't pay any monthly fees for retrieving and updating your stock market data. You pay just a small one time licensing fee to become a registered user of Quotelf software, nothing more.

Do you have a free trial period? What are the limitations of a trial version? - Yes! You have a free 30-day trial period for unrestricted data downloads to decide whether Quotelf works for you or not. If you don't like it, just uninstall it from your HD and own nothing, no questions asked! Actually there's only one main limitation of a trial version of Quotelf - it will stop to update the quotes after 30 days. Also we limited the number of stocks you can update by 200. The Starting date is limited by 1995 in unregistered version. If you register software, it will work for you again, no reinstallation required.

What's the source of historical data used in Quotelf? - The data source is a quite reliable free Internet server : Yahoo Finance You can read more about provided historical data by clicking here

What's the length of historical data? - Historical Quotes do not go back further than 1970.

Is registration through Internet safe? Do I have other payment options? - Yes! Your purchases are securely processed by RegSoft , the recognized leader in electronic payment processing. You can order Quotelf by a credit card, Postal Mail Ordering, Phone Ordering, FAX Ordering.

Can I update weekly or monthly or intraday data? - You can update End-of-Day, Weekly and Monthly data. Intraday data is not supported by DialData protocol.

What do I need to use your software? - Two things: (1) an Internet connection, and (2) a charting program - OmegaResearch's product (TradeStation or SuperCharts 4) with Omega DialData Downloader. Make sure that your charting software is updated to Y2K compliant version. If you have these two things, you are ready to use Quotelf.

I can't update a particular symbol. What do I do? - Make sure that this symbol exists on Yahoo. You can click the following URL and request the data for your ticker. Some symbols are invalid on Yahoo - example : "*DWI X" - Dow Jones Industrial Average according to Omega Downloader internal database. It will never update as Yahoo has the different ticker for it - ^DJI and you should manually change the symbol for Dow Jones in your local database.

I have ProSuite but I don't see any Omega Downloader installed. - Omega Downloader is an optional component and you probably have not chosen to install it during installation process of ProSuite software. You need to re-intstall OmegaResearch Prosuite package and choose Custom installation during setup and check Install Omega Downloader option from a list of installable components.

How can I update my software? - To update your software please visit OmegaResearch FTP server and download the latest patches along with instructions how to apply them. Make absolutely sure that you applied Y2K patches to SC4 and TS4 products. For example, if you have Supercharts4 build 7, then you need to download SC4B8.exe , SC4B9.exe, SC4B10.exe and install them one by one.

How to create log file? - You can create it by checking "Maintain log file" option in your Omega Downloader (access menu Tools->Options->Misc). The log file of the session is located in C:\Program Files\Omega Research\Dataman\ directory and its name is "dmgr.log"

Can the security of my computer be compromised when running Quotelf ? - Short answer is NO. Although Quotelf opens 23rd port (also known as telnet port) on your computer (this is required by DialData protocol) it is not telnet server and it "understands" only DialData commands and nothing more. Moreover, the socket on telnet port listens only on 127.0.0.1 IP address (virtual loopback) and it can't be used for connection from any other computer.

I constantly receive errors relating to "hosts" file. What's wrong? - You probably run Quotelf on Windows NT (2000 or XP) platform. The "hosts" file is required for correct operation of Quotelf as it's being used for redirecting connections from DialData servers in the Internet to Quotelf server on your machine. You need either login into Windows with admin privileges or increase your privileges in order hosts file could be read/written or if you run Windows XP you can right mouse click on Quotelf's executable - omega.exe and choose menu "Run on behalf of ..." and set admin account.

I get "Exception caught: Receive Error #10054" message. What does it mean? - This means that Quotelf was trying to send some data to Omega Downloader, but OD has already closed the connection. Nothing wrong. This message is shown only for information and can be treated as "Quotelf is ready for the next download session". If there's still data to be downloaded, click Download button in OD again.

Does Quotelf update fundamental data? - No. You can check the option but it will be ignored during download.

Can I use Recollect Bad data feature in Omega Downloader? - No. If you need to correct the data, you can either do it manually in the Edit menu or simply delete the price data and download it again. If you use Recollect option you will get unpredictable results.

What are the additional Settings I can change in Quotelf? - You can click Files->Settings to access the additional settings like time-out, Successful Download delay and other. The most interesting is Successful Download delay parameter. This means the following : if you downloaded MSFT quotes, then during next 30min (default value) any attempt to download MSFT symbol will be ignored by Quotelf. This is very useful feature if you have a large database and some symbols do not update for some reason during the first attempt. In this case you simply click Download button again and Quotelf will skip all downloaded symbols saving the time and Internet traffic.

Can I update EOD quotes during trading hours?- Yes. Just do not forget about the value you use for Successful Download delay parameter (covered in the above topic) as if you try to update the quotes too frequently, Quotelf may just ignore your requests until this delay interval elapsed.

Quotelf can't open local port. What do I do? - Quotelf uses two local ports (7373 and 23) for listening incoming connections from Omega Downloader (do you remember, that Quotelf emulates DialData server?). If one of them is occupied by another program, then Quotelf will not initialize the required port and will not be able to communicate with the Downloader. More frequently the problem arises with the 23rd port as it's commonly used as a telnet port. You can type the following command : "netstat -a" in command prompt and try to find the line related to 23(telnet) port. If you see that something is "LISTENING" 23(telnet) port when Quotelf is not running, then you should determine what program is occupying this port. Often, if you run IIS (Internet Information Server) on your machine, there's telnet server on 23rd port. If so, please disable it before running Quotelf.

Quotelf can't open local port. What do I do? - Although being valid on Yahoo, this symbol is invalid for DialData protocol which limits the length of the symbol by 8 characters. But the solution still exists. Read about Yahoo aliases

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