Discussing the article: "Developing a Terminal Manager (Part 2): Running Multiple Terminal Instances"

 

Check out the new article: Developing a Terminal Manager (Part 2): Running Multiple Terminal Instances.

Let's move on to using multiple terminal instances on the server by setting up a simple control panel for starting and stopping them. Now it is time to expand the functionality and move on to the next stages — implementing more complex features, such as managing multiple terminal instances, state persistence, integration with the MetaTrader 5 API, and a web interface with comprehensive information about the terminals.

Let's try to outline the approximate scope of the next part of the implementation. First, since we have not yet actually split the overall functionality between two different web servers, we will have to add the interface components — in some minimal form — to the web server we have already started building. This work will not be in vain, since we will be able to migrate the existing code to another web server with a few tweaks down the road. So let's start by creating additional files to house the different parts of the project code, giving the project a bit more structure.

Second, let's take the next obvious step by adding the ability to work with multiple MetaTrader 5 terminal instances. In other words, we will implement registering, starting, stopping, and retrieving the current set of running instances. We will leave retrieving detailed information about the trading account for later.

This will require making certain architectural decisions in advance, which is not as simple as it might seem at first glance. We are now responsible for the future development of the project. The ease of future implementation and the potential limits of functionality expansion depend on how effective the decisions made now turn out to be. We really would not want to reach a certain stage of the project only to find out that, in order to move forward, we have to go back to the beginning and redo everything. Yes, of course, that does happen sometimes, but we will try to avoid it by being more thoughtful about the choices we make.


Author: Yuriy Bykov