"no more often than"

Hi,


I noticed something curious when using "no more often than". Specifically, when its value is greater than the refresh rate.

In this case,if in the last refresh the trigger wasn´t fired, the time space to the next will be according to the refresh rate. If the trigger was fired, it will  be run according to the "no more often than".

Explaining better. I have a refresh rate of 5 seconds and a trigger with "no more often than 30 sec"

1-Should the trigger not be fired, it runs once each 5 secs. I placed an impossible condition: "selection´s rank is equal to 1000".

2-Should the trigger be fired than it runs once each 30 seconds.

You can see it in image i send attached. I send as well, the test trigger with the condition in 1. For the 2nd situation you just have to delete the condition. 

Is that the expected behavior? Or, am i doing something wrong?

Thanks in advance

Hello!

Yes, sure, it is an expected behaviour. Let me explain.

The wording "no more often than 30 sec" indicates that even if the conditions of your trigger are met, the trigger will not be executed again until at least 30 seconds have passed since the last time it was executed.

In your example, if a market is refreshed every 5 seconds, the trigger will check its conditions every 5 seconds, in case they are satisfied. If they're not, it will try again the next time that market is refreshed, i.e. in 5 seconds. If they are, the trigger will execute its actions and then hold for the next 30 seconds without doing anything (not even checking its conditions).

Incidentally, if a market is refreshed, say, every minute, that means the trigger will be executed every minute (at best), hence the words "no more often" (i.e. could be less often).

Hope it makes sense.

Hi Oxa,

I got it now. I was taking the word "executed" as it was "checked". 

So, I was thinking the trigger wouldn´t be checked, in the example i gave, inside the interval of 30 seconds from the previous time it had been checked.

Is there anyway to make it just been checked once each 30 seconds, even when the refresh rate is lower than that (e.g. 5 seconds)?

Thanks

All triggers are always checked as often as is the market refresh rate.

There are ways to exit the condition checking early (i.e. by introducing a special timestamp variable), but it's tricky.

May I ask why exactly you need to reduce the frequency of condition checks?

Hi again Oxa,

My objective is to reduce the load on the program.

I am developping a trigger for football that will use several markets and lots of trigger conditions .

As you know on football i´ve an immensity of games, mainly at night and on weekends. In a scenario like this, an importante limitation, is the overload of MF Pro if you are monitoring too many markets.

At the same time, there are lots of triggers, that even if need to be checked from time to time, to do it everytime the market is refreshed, would be an unnecessary waste of ressources. This ressources could and should be used to monitor further markets.

So, it´s not for any special trigger or condition, it´s primarily to reduce the load on the program, increasing the stability and freeing up ressources to be used on further markets.

Thanks

Inspired by what you told me, i've thought in 2 solutions:

1st one (test1): with no timestamp variables, but with the activate and deactivate functions. I guess, i could use timestamps here too, but i don´t think, it is necessary, in this case.

It demands some extra checks to activate and deactivate. But as the activate/deactivate triggers can be used to command a large number of triggers and can be programmed to be checked at a slower rate, i think it can be useful.


2nd one (test 2): this time with a timestamp variable. This one in addiction to create an user variable demands, as well, the main trigger to be checked at refresh rate, even if only till the timestamp variable.

This is probably the worst of the 2 solutions. Since, as i referred, it demands a constant check on the main triggers at the refresh rate. Even so, it allows, if, well used, a good redution of ressources.

As you can see these are far from being ideal solutions. It would be great to hear different and hopefully better ideas.

Hi,

I´ve noticed that when using activate and deactivate functions, if the object you want to act on is a trigger when the treigger is executed it will say: Going to deactivate/activate a trigger named...followed by the name of the trigger that is being executed. If it's a block the name shown would be of the block you want to activate/deactivate.

Explaining better: in the "test1" trigger i sent in the last message, i've 3 triggers. 1 main one called test, and further 2 secondary ones, to activate and deactivate the main one. I called them activate and deactivate respectively.

So, when the function "activate (or deactivate) trigger/block test" is executed, i was expecting it to say..."going to activate/deactivate a trigger named "test", but instead it says "going to.....named activate (or deactivate)".

Is this the expected behavior?

Thanks

My objective is to reduce the load on the program.

To reduce the load, please follow the advice given for football markets in this article:

What is the optimal configuration for MarketFeeder Pro?