The IQ online documentation for update (Q) messages
http://www.iqfeed.net/dev/api/docs/UpdateSummaryMessageFormat.cfm
clearly states that the date format for both the
Last Trade Date
and
Expiration date
fields is of the form
MM/DD/YY

But I just happened to notice when pouring thru some log files today that, at least for the Last Trade Date field, they seem to have updated the format to
MM/DD/YYYY
(I have no idea about the Expiration date field, since I do not trade options or futures at the moment.)

Anyone else notice this, or is this just a fluke?

If they have, in fact noticed this change, then they need to update their documentation as it is now out of synch.

Mind you, I am all in favor of this change, as anyone who still uses 2 digit years after the y2k fiasco should be most severely punished! I just need to know that I can count on it...

Hi
I looked at your reference page and checked my DTN IQ and those columns both report that data as XX/XX/XX

Is this your own software that you are seeing this in? This may be something the developers could better answer.

Please let me know if it is developer feed or DTN IQ.

Thanks
Karen

>Is this your own software that you are seeing this in?

Well, I use my own software to log the exact messages that DTN sends me. So the new YYYY date format that I saw in some of today's messages is really what DTN is now sending down the wire.

Another bizarre thing is that the Last Trade Date field is only supposed to be filled in for OTC or BB stocks, but I was seeing it get filled in for decidedly different stocks (e.g. mainstrem NYSE or Nasdaq stocks).


>Please let me know if it is developer feed or DTN IQ.

How do I know which feed I am using? I am a developer, but I am also sybscribing to 1300 stock symbols, which someone yesterday told me means that I am using DTN's feed and not IQFeed--is that correct?

Thanks for letting me know some other details.
Could you please private message me your log on #? so I can check your log ons?

In the lower right corner of your computer down by the clock, there is a little white circle, with DTN on it. If you double click on that it will pull up the IQ Connection Manager. It will tell you what version you are using.

The log on # you can provide me, or an email address associated with your account will help me look you up and see what you are using to hit the servers here.

You can call me at 800/397-7000. This sounds like it is more of developers issue, but I want to make sure. If I am not available, anyone can help you at that number.

If you are not able to call in, you can also reach us through chat at www.iqfeed.net. Click on the technical support button for live chat. We are there from 630am Central time to 6pm Central time.
Thanks
Karen

FWIW:
I looked at the data that comes in from the DTN client on stocks and futures and here are the date formats for the fundamental data and quote data. This is unfiltered/unprocessed data, just from the parsed string that comes from the client, v4.1.2.0:

Pay date, balance sheet date, and split date have the truncated XX format for year.

52 wk high/low and calendar yr high/low use the XXXX format.

Last trade date and expiration date use the XXXX format.

David

---

IQXP Software
http://www.iqxp.com

LiveWire Update Service
PO Box 1417
Fairfield, IA 52556
641-472-8393
http://www.livewire-cablesoft.com/

Hi David,

I am going to contact the developers to see if this is something from the API that is used, as I am not seeing this same problem in my DTN IQ feed.

Thanks for your patience.

Karen

I just heard from the developers and they are researching this problem right now.

Thanks

Karen,

I just spoke to Ed Lenz at your firm, and he said that I am using the DTN feed.

I am also following up with sending him an email describing some other issues that I have seen today.

Sorry for the delay on this response. I dont get notifications of posts outside the developer support section of the forums.

Concerning Last trade date:
This field, from what I can tell has always had a 4 digit year (I checked back as far as version 2.3.0.1). It is possible that something changed serverside, however, if that is the case, the code we use to process it within IQFeed has not changed during that time.

I checked briefly with our server team and they indicated they do not recall having ever made the change.

So it appears that our documentation has always been wrong on this issue.
Additionally, I did notice that the documentation from version 2.3.0.1 indicated that this was a field only populated for OTC and BB stocks, however, this is no longer the case and it should be populated for all stocks.

As for the other fields, as David pointed out, many of them are still in 2 digit years. I will verify that the documentation for these fields is accurate for our next release.

Steve,

My opinion is that you should always use a consistent date format. I think that YYYY is the only way to go, so I would like to see you consistently use it everywhere; just make sure that your documentation is up to par.

This is slightly off topic, but I argue that the only intelligent way to write dates is like YYYY/MM/DD:
--its logically consistent, unlike the usual defective american way of MM/DD/YY(YY)
--it correctly lists the date fields top down, from most significant to least, unlike the defective european standard of DD/MM/YYYY.

But maybe its too late to change all of your formats this radically now.

What ever you do, please do not diddle with the date format as suggested above. It will cause a meltdown - if it isn't broke don't fix it. It has taken years to get to a stable DTN Internet feed. This has happened in some of the error messages that got changed in a new release some time back that really messed up the empirically derived interface to the feed. No mater how good a 'spec' or API is there are differences in what gets sent and what is specified that we developers learn to live with - it is sort of a dungeons-N-dragons game to find out the real API. Consistency and back ward compatibility is very important.

Sorry for the rant, but I do not want to see any changes. Unless there is a torrent of objections from the 3rd party developers don't fix what is not broken. Document the vagaries.

One last comment, kudos to forum participant "FullyArticulate" for his constant surveillance on the data on the many varied instruments that get posted. He provides a great service indirectly for DTN on data feed QA from an independent source. Everyone wins from his comments and observations.

David

---

IQXP Software
http://www.iqxp.com

LiveWire Update Service
PO Box 1417
Fairfield, IA 52556
641-472-8393
http://www.livewire-cablesoft.com/

This is a catch 22 situation. I agree with David, that sometimes it is good to leave well enough alone. On the other hand, I would really like to see consistent dates throughout the API.

If dates were to be changed, my vote would be the yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss (or however the ISO standard specifics are) in a 24 hour clock.

If things were to be changed, it might be well to add an ex'd version record format, much like Microsoft does in their API when they introduce a 'new and improved' method or function call.

A new record format could conceivably introduce a 'version field' so that client software can figure out how to interpret the record. Interactive Broker's API does this sort of thing (use various record formats, along with a version code interpretation) to handle the introduction of new services.

There are no current plans to change any of the date formatting. As mentioned above, I have verified all of the date formats are documented correctly for the next release but no changes are planned at this time.

If sufficient demand (or need) arises to standardize the formatting throughout the feed, we will look into finding a solution that has minimal impact on older applications.