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Today's problems with the Thomson data feed were extremely disappointing on a number of levels. The biggest frustration from my perspective is that promises made directly to me by Thomson were not kept. Thomson - for reasons that I cannot fathom - continues to rely on us to notify them of problems with their equipment rather than install effective monitoring systems. It is a situation I consider unacceptable and I have told them so in no uncertain terms.
This is not the first time a vendor has let us down. This is not the first time that Thomson has seriously let us down. As long as we only have one data feed here at StockCharts.com however we are stuck with Thomson and their unreliable servers. Sigh.
Ahhh, but notice how I phrased that last sentence? As long as we only have one data feed here...
The good news (and the ironic news) is that we are very, very close to having two data feeds here at StockCharts. Over the past month, we've been working out the remaining kinks with IDC/Comstock and the new data equipment that they've installed here. The process has taken waaaaaay too long to complete (mostly due to delays over unnecessary exchange agreements with the stock exchanges), but the end is very close now.
I expect that we will start using data from the IDC/Comstock feed for some of our charts starting next week. We will start with just a couple of stocks and then add more and more as we become more comfortable with the feed. Our goal is to have the data for all stocks coming off the IDC/Comstock feed by the end of April.
By having the majority of our charts using data from the IDC/Comstock feed, our reliance on Thomson will be dramatically reduced. And by having two feeds here, our ability to continue serving charts if one of the feeds has problems will be dramatically increased. Having two feeds is expensive, but today's problems underscored how important it is.
