Is datagridview viable for real time data (winforms)

Question

0.00/5 (No votes)

See more:

Hi all,
I am building a depth of market ladder for futures trading using the CTS t4 api. the data may update more than every 100ms and I'm wondering if the standard dataGridView would allow updates this fast without bogging down the rest of the application.

What I have tried:

are there are any optimizations I could make or should I look towards a 3rd party extension?

thanks

Posted 9-Mar-24 13:44pm

ollie 2024

Updated 9-Mar-24 14:20pm

v2

Add a Solution

Comments

PIEBALDconsult 9-Mar-24 20:21pm

dataGridView is not viable for anything but quick proof-of-concept and demos.
Find something better.

[no name] 9-Mar-24 22:44pm

It "depends". Number of rows. Number of columns. How many "cells" actually need updating. "Virtualization" (the presence or lack thereof). And I suspect a "100ms" response time for a "market indicator" is not something that a "human" typically deals with. An automatic trading program ... maybe. The "data" may "update" every 100ms; that doesn't mean, the screen has too. Does a "1 second" refresh instead of 100ms make that much difference in this case? I doubt it.

2 solutions

Solution 2

Before you can answer the question, you need to understand what it is you are trying to solve here. When you talk about the refresh rate, it is worth thinking about what you actually mean here. If you were doing it a full refresh of data every time then you, most certainly, wouldn’t want to use the DGV. That’s not what happens typically with trading APIs though. The good ones provide partial refreshes, which only return data that has changed. If that’s the case, you should be looking at the volatility of trading, and whether you are likely to be subscribing to the full set of data, or a a smaller, more manageable set.

With that information, you are ready to perform tests. If I were you, I would look at binding data, and not trying to manage it yourself.

When I was doing this kind of application, I used WPF rather than WinForms. I got superior performance in WPF. Just something for you to consider,

Posted 9-Mar-24 19:56pm

Pete O'Hanlon

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

OriginalGriff · Accepted Answer · 2024-03-09T19:46:00

The first problem is that Windows isn't an RTOS^* so whatever you do you are going to run into problems if you truly need real time display updates. Which as Gerry has said, is actually quite unlikely because human response times aren't that fast!

The second is that the .NET framework isn't designed with real time working in mind: it operates on a garbage collection system, so response time to anything can't be guaranteed as at any moment your code can be frozen while teh GC does it's thing. Generally speaking, most processors are fast enough; most code doesn't mangle memory sufficiently to ever trigger the GC into action so you don't notice it - but sub 100ms updates to any control is going to burn though strings at a rate of knots unless it is specifically designed to cope. Which I doubt the DGV is, or any other control.

It's also going to depend on what an "update" entails: if it adds or removes rows then that's slow - very slow - if it changes individual values in a "static matrix" then that could be quicker.

In essence, while a DGV might work on your machine if you code for it pretty carefully, there is no guarantee that it'll last out a week with a "real world trader" but slowly bring the whole machine to a crawl instead. I think you are going to have to write your own code - and very carefully - to get anything like what you are asking for

* Real Time Operating System