Unlike many software programs that store each symbol data into a different file. QuantShare stores all historical quotes in a single database file. This file contains the database layout, each stock quotes and it may also contains additional information. Intraday, Tick and custom databases are stored in separate databases (Intraday and tick databases will be available in few weeks). Each time you create a new custom database (Historical or Intraday), a new file, with the same name as the database name, is created in your account directory. Each time you add or remove data from this database, the trading software will access this file and perform the appropriate actions. Intraday custom database are associated with files that have "db1" as extension, while Historical custom databases have "db0" as file extension. Using a single file instead of thousands (There are more than 8000 stocks in the U.S. Stock Market), greatly improve quotes reading process; screener and simulation will run faster. It also makes easy to copy and backup databases. Database Fragmentation But even with this, adding and removing data/quotes several thousands of time will make the database file more and more fragmented. Fragmentation occurs when the system tries to add new data to a file but cannot found free space close enough physically to that file on the drive. The result is that the file will be composed of pieces of data located at different areas on the drive and consequently the application will take much longer to read the database file. This cannot be noticed when displaying charts, however you will notice an increase in the time taken by the simulator or screener to process the data. Database Optimization Tool Fortunately there is a solution, and this solution is a built-in tool whose role is to recreate database files and to reduce the fragmentation of each one of them. The database optimizer tool is scheduled to be run by the trading software once a month. The interval can of course be changed by selecting Accounts, Application Settings then Databases tab. You can force an optimization for the next re-start by clicking on the "Schedule databases optimization for the next start". The tool is always executed at application startup. We have seen improvement of more than 200% in certain cases in the backtesting process after executing the optimizer tool. Note that the optimization process takes 2 to 15 minutes depending on the number of database files and their sizes and that the optimizer cannot be done efficiently if there are not enough space on the disk (at least 10 times the size of your database files - >4Gb).
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