This article reflects my experience developing an automated equity trading platforms using the MBTrading SDK/API. I have written this article as an individual, not representing the MBTrading in ANY way.
MB Trading's SDK/API is a fully Microsoft COM-compliant. It is dependent on Microsoft COM Objects and is suggested for use with VB, C,.C# and Excel.
MB Trading's support and high level technical folks are very helpful, but they could not resolve all of my technical issues, which been raised during development phase.
Here are some of the issues that I had to deal with :
1) The source code samples, provided by MB, shows how to pull one quote using the main thread , but there are some problems when pulling many quotes(with different symbols ) using the main thread. In order to solve it , I needed to work my way finding a creative multithreaded solutions .
2) When asking for historical data using the API , the document gives good specification on the various parameters , but when putting all things together in my own code , there was a need to play around with the parameters till the mechanism was really working.
3) A minor "minus", which was not a big concern for me , was that MB Trading's API "consumes" a login, and clients (by default) get only 1 login. This means , You just can't be logged into both of them with the same username( BTW , Forex traders are entitled to a free secondary login ID ).
Despite of the problems I've described above , My main impression is good. The very best advantage that MB Trading offers is their customer support and a SDK site (http://sdk.mbtrading.com/) with associated Yahoo! groups forum, and a very well documented API. You can check out the library of the code samples (VB6, VB.NET, C#.NET) ,which you can download in a zip file ( http://sdk.mbtrading.com/v.htm )
That should give you some examples of how to employ various approaches in your coding to use the objects in the SDK. The big plus for developers , is that MB provide a free demo , which is great to get your software developed and fine tuned. (Even though ,Demo logins may not see the current day for day bars, the current hour for min bars, or the current 20 mins for tick bars)
Moris oz
Algorithmic trading Consulting and development
www.caapitech.com