What is the advantage of using COM?

[Drunkenight]

I have heard a lot about using the COM interface. What is the main advantage of using COM? Is it the speed of getting your bets to market? Is it the flexibility of getting the data you want? Is it extra functions that you can access?

Currently I use excel triggered betting for in-play horse racing. I find that it can take some time (maybe 3 seconds) to get my bets into the market which can be a long time in an in-play race. This generally means I don't trade the last 30 seconds of a race.

I would greatly appreciate any answers as I am currently thinking about investigating using the COM interface for in-play horse racing.

[GaryRussell]

There is no real speed advantage. It is more about flexibility and the extra functionality. Are you accounting for the the in running delay? It will always take at least one second to place your bet because of the delay Betfair impose. Also if your bets are below the minimum allowed stake then it will take 3 seconds to place your bet because of the way the "cheat" works, maybe this is the reason why are seeing a 3 second delay.

[Drunkenight]

Thanks for the reply. Yes sorry good point about the 1 second delay. The 3 seconds includes the 1 second delay, so in general it is taking about 2 seconds to hit the market. No I don't place any bets below £2 for the delay reason (and the fact that Betfair sees it as 3 transactions).

What are the main extra features and flexibility available with the COM interface? Is there anything particularly useful to in-running horse betting?

[GaryRussell]

There isn't anything useful for in running betting.

The COM interface is for the geeks amongst us who prefer to write code instead of using formulas to trigger bets. You also are not restricted to using Excel, you could write your own .Net application to use the COM interface. Another advantage is that you don't need to manually set up the link to Excel as it is all initiated from your code, you just need to make sure BA is running. You can also get the traded volume information which is not available through the normal Excel link.

[Captain Sensible]

I keep meaning to look into the COM stuff but my programming is limited to php although looking at the php net site it looks like php will comunicate so maybe I'll give it a try.

As far as I can see having the COM features on BA is much the same as you allowing people to use your productId code to access the full api with BA taking care of any keepalive/login/header functions etc. If that is the case then surely the COM would be more efficient and better employed if you basically mimicked the current api calls and stripped out the returned headers that BA would take care of. That way there wouldn't be any need for you to write your own COM calls such as BfSport etc and all the api calls would be accessable.

[GaryRussell]

I thought about that but I think it might be over stepping the mark slightly by basically creating a wrapper for the API and in effect selling something that normally costs £200 per month for £6 a month.

[jokerjoe]

That's kind of what I was thinking, the COM could be an easier way to access the Betfair API. BA does an excellent job and one wouldn't need to reinvent the wheel in terms of all the background processes we probably take for granted.

You could probably spin it off into a separate product, maybe even a non-graphical barebones product. It'd be massively appealing to all the would-be bot writers who:

• would rather concentrate on strategy then back end logic
• or can't program for the API anyway
• those who can't afford the API fees.

It's pretty much all there already except for a few things. The ability to access markets indepently of the tabs or alternatively to access multiple tabs is the biggest one.

[jokerjoe]

Ah well looks like you answered my thought before me! Shame, you should still keep on adding extra COM functionality to the standard product though.

[Captain Sensible]

To be honest the COM functions are already just a wrapper for limited API calls. And like joe says it's just reinventing the wheel which I imagine takes up time that probably isn't neccessary and any further added calls all need additional coding integrated into the core of ba.

Maybe you should have a rethink about the whole core engine of the COM and a rewrite so any call can be incorporated or disabled easily. I haven't looked at the COM returns so can't compare them against the returned api calls to see what is or isn't returned and how the data is being parsed. The api manual is pretty comprehensive and I imagine anyone already using the com would be capable of sending the required fields and using the data returned in much the same as the api does anyway.

Obviously the only stumbling block is how Betfair would see BA if you included a full wrapper although I don't think they'd be as against it as you'd think they would. With a core engine you'd be able quickly add and disable any calls to limit the access to what they'd consider acceptable.