TBE Slowdown - Betfair Results Service

[TheBetEngine]

There have been a number of reports recently of TheBetEngine slowing down or appearing to "stutter".

This is actually a Betfair problem, which is not helped by the current design of TBE.

Basically the Betfair Results Service is not working correctly with most calls to the service timing out. This timeout causes TBE to appear to hang (it hasn't hung, it is just unable to update the screen). The Service used to return results within 3-5 seconds typically, but over the past fortnight the times have been much longer. Yesterday (Saturday 31st March) the Service was only operational intermittently and when it was available it was taking nearly 60 seconds to respond.

The Results Service is used to gather the results in TEST mode, and to check the results of races where the Last Matched Odds method is inconclusive (this applies more to Place markets than Win markets). For people operating in LIVE mode, you can change the results source to Settled Market, which removes the dependence on the Results Service.

Please refer to the manual (section 2.9) for a discussion of the pros/cons of the various results sources.

I am preparing a new version of TBE which has a longer default timeout for the Service and the ability to adjust it up to 60 seconds, in an attempt to cut down the amount of failures. I have also moved the management of the Service to a background task, which will enable the screen to be updated.

Note - this has affected all results apart from the AUS/NZ results which use a different service in order to determine results.

I have raised the issue with the Results Service with Betfair and await their response.

Alistair