The Hal Junior series


FCharts Data Importing Tutorials

These pages show a step-by-step guide for first time users.
The examples given are for the ASX (Australian Stock Exchange)


Example Seven

This example will show you how to tidy your database to speed up your program.

Cleaning your database
Historical data may contain thousands of warrants, options, delisted companies and so on. The more company records in your database, the slower the importing. Here are my suggestions for building a streamlined ASX database:
1) Set the minimum ticker length to 3 and the maximum ticker length to 4
2) Set the date cutoff to something like 19990101
3) Import all the data
4) In the settings form, delete all stocks which haven't traded since 20010101.
5) In the same form, delete all companies with 5 or more letter tickers.
6) In the settings form, check 'Do not add new companies when importing'.
That should reduce your database to about 1600 stocks, which will import & scan 2-3 times faster.

That's it for the examples. Click here to return to the start or here to return to the FCharts SE page.