New features in ELWAVE 5.1

Release date:  September 22, 1999
Platforms:        Windows 95,98, NT 3.5, NT 4.0

This release of ELWAVE 5.1 contains the following features and improvements not found in previous versions:

1. New version of Sentinel hardware lock drivers - Read this!
2. Improved, highly stable intraday analysis
3. Improved analysis speed for Windows NT!
4. Fast screen updating
5. Super fast Autosave of price data in ASCII format
6. Ability to edit Price Data from within ELWAVE
7. Ability to compress and export the price data to any compression setting
8. Ability to compress incoming real-time tick data on the fly
9. Redesigned parts of the user interface
10. Improved ASCII import
11. Improved hardware lock management
12. CandleSticks color customization
13. Improved TC 2000 4.0/4.1 support
14. Improved Keyword data format support
15. Improved realtime feed support

1. New version of Sentinel hardware lock drivers

If you are upgrading from ELWAVE 5.0b or earlier versions, please read the following.

ELWAVE 5.1 comes with a new set of drivers for the Sentinel SuperPro hardware lock from Rainbow Technologies. We have found that the installer for these drivers provided by Rainbow will crash on some Windows 95 systems (just the Rainbow installer, not the system or any other applications).

Since this installer is also called from within the ELWAVE Setup Wizard, you may experience a 'blue screen' error at the very end of the installation procedure. At this point, the installation of ELWAVE has succeeded, but the driver installation has been compromised and you will no longer be able to run ELWAVE because it will no longer be able to find the hardware lock.

To solve this problem, please do the following:

· From the folder in which you installed ELWAVE, go to the 'Sentinel' subfolder and run 'SENTW9X'
· From the main menu select 'Function | Remove Sentinel Driver'
· Restart Windows
· Run SENTW9X again and select 'Function | Install Sentinel Driver'

If you run Windows NT you will have to download the Sentinel SuperPro drivers seperately because these are not included with the ELWAVE Setup Wizard. To install the drivers for Windows NT, extract the files from this ZIP archive in a temporary folder andrun 'SETUP' to install the drivers. Please note that the problem described above does not apply to Windows NT. If you received ELWAVE 5.1 on CD-ROM, you can find the Windows NT drivers on the ELWAVE CD-ROM in the folder D:\Sentinel\WIN_NT where 'D' is your CD-ROM drive letter

2. Improved, highly stable intraday analysis

There is a new option in the 'Analysis Options' dialog for the 'Analysis type', called 'Real time'. This setting has been optimized for real time use and is recommended if you have a real time data feed with Automatic Analysis Update enabled.

3. Improved analysis speed for Windows NT!

This version of ELWAVE has been optimized for use on Windows NT systems and shows a remarkable improvement compared to ELWAVE 5.0b in terms of speed.

4. Fast screen updating

Screen flickering as a result of new ticks coming in through the data feed has been reduced significantly by only updating the portion of the chart that is actually affected by the new data.

5. Super fast Autosave of price data in ASCII format

ASCII file updates resulting from new ticks coming in through the data feed are now done in a fraction of the time it took previous version of ELWAVE.

6. Ability to edit Price Data from within ELWAVE

From the menu bar: 'Price Data|Edit price data...'

A completely new feature in ELWAVE is the ability to edit the price data from within ELWAVE. This is convenient if you want to remove or correct bad ticks without having to close ELWAVE and edit the data file using a text editor. You can also use this feature to test what-if scenarios, but please note that the entire analysis will be erased if you remove or modify a price

Please also note that the modified data can only be saved in ASCII of MetaStock 3.5 format. If the original data file is in some other format, the changes you made will not be reflected in the original data file.

7. Ability to compress and export the price data to any compression

From the menu bar: 'Price Data|Export price data…'

Another completely new feature is the ability to compress the actual price data base from within ELWAVE to any desired compression setting. This is very different from selecting a compression through the right-mouse button popup menu. If you select a compression through the popup menu, the underlying price data is unchanged and only the appearance on screen is changed to minute, hourly etc. The analysis engine will still refer to the uncompressed (tick) data. If you compress the price data base using this new feature, several ticks or records will be combined into one record for each time period with an open,high,low and close field for each bar and the analysis engine will use this compressed data to perform the analysis.

After the data is compressed, you will be asked if you want to save the compressed data. Be careful: this operation cannot be reversed. If you overwrite your original data file containing the uncompressed data, you will lose your original tick data.

8. Ability to compress incoming real-time tick data on the fly

From the menu bar: 'Price Data|Realtime datafeed…|Tick Storage' or
'Scenario|New|From realtime datafeed…|Tick Storage'

To allow your data to be updated in a way consistent with your price history, it is now possible to compress incoming ticks before they are added to the price data base. This means that if you select 'Store one tick every minute' only a single OHLC record will be created for all ticks coming in during the same one minute period. The High, Low and Close fields are continuously updated during this minute as new ticks come in. If you select a new compression setting you will be asked if you want to compress your price history using the same compression. Please read the notes above regarding compression price data.

9. Redesigned parts of the user interface

Please download the errata to the ELWAVE manual (MS-Word 97 document) regarding user interface changes. You can view this document using MS-Word or WordPad (supplied with Windows 98). If you have MS-Word 95 (6.0) or WordPad for Windows 95, please download this self-extracting Word 6.0 document instead.

10. Improved ASCII import

Some problems were solved that prevented certain types of ASCII from being imported into ELWAVE.

11. Improved hardware lock management

With previous versions of ELWAVE it was not possible to run more than one instance ELWAVE when running a 30-day trial without the risk of compromising the contents of the hardware lock. This limitation has been removed with this release.

12. CandleSticks color customization

Colors for CandleSticks can now be customized seperately for up and down trends.

13. Improved TC 2000 4.0/4.1 support

This release provides improved support for current and future versions of the TC2000 data server, thereby eliminating the need for manual tweaking of the ELWAVE51.INI file when new versions of this server are released.

14. Improved Keyword data format support

Obtaining a list of stocks could take extremely long with previous versions of ELWAVE. This has been fixed in this release.

15. Improved realtime feed support

The data feed handling code of ELWAVE has been revised to increase performance during automatic analysis updates.