kdb+/q tickerplant : what is `timesym?

Question

I am following test tickerplant and feedhandler setup instructions. However, when I try to run q tick.q someTable tick_log -p 5555 I get the following error: 'timesym. There is nothing about it in the above mentioned "C API for kdb+" white paper. What I did:

• downloaded https://github.com/KxSystems/kdb-tick/blob/master/tick.q
• mkdir tick
• put u.q from https://github.com/KxSystems/kdb-tick/blob/master/tick/u.q into tick/
• put someTable schema into tick/someTable.q (contains sym and time columns)
• mkdir tick_log
• ran the above q tick.q someTable tick_log -p 5555 command

Could you please help me to understand what is the meaning of the timesym variable and how I should supply it? Am I missing some steps?

Thank you very much for your help!

Answer 1

'timesym is an error thrown by the tickerplant if the first two columns in the table being consumed are not time & sym respectively. You can spot where the error is occuring on line 30 of tick.q, in the .u.tick function (search for timesym).

In order to resolve this issue, you need to ensure time & sym are the first two columns of the table (in this order). Alternatively, you could change the tickerplant code to suit your table.