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Matlab Working with Matlab

Support for Matlab is a part of Datafeed Toolbox for Matlab: since R2007a edition.

MathWorks provides functions overview, usage instructions and some examples on the toolbox webpage.

Versions

As Matlab/datafeed toolbox evolves features or instruction below are subject to revisions. Please refer to toolbox documentation for latest version. Users have reported that this works with more recent versions (e.g. R2015b on RHEL 6.8/2016b and 2017a on macOS).

See also community-supported native connector dmarienko/kdbml

First, we start up a kdb+ process that we wish to communicate with from Matlab and load some sample data into it. Save following as tradedata.q file

/ List of securities
seclist:([name:`ACME`ABC`DEF`XYZ]
 market:`US`UK`JP`US)

/ Distinct list of securities
secs: distinct exec name from seclist

n:5000
/ Data table
trade:([]sec:`seclist$n?secs;price:n?100.0;volume:100*10+n?20;exchange:5+n?2.0;date:2004.01.01+n?499)

/ Intra day tick data table
intraday:([]sec:`seclist$n?secs;price:n?100.0;volume:100*10+n?20;exchange:5+n?2.0;time:08:00:00.0+n?43200000)

/ Function with one input parameter
/ Return total trading volume for given security
totalvolume:{[stock] select volume from trade where sec = stock}

/ Function with two input parameters
/ Return total trading volume for given security with volume greate than 
/ given value
totalvolume2:{[stock;minvolume] select sum(volume) from trade where sec = stock, volume > minvolume}

Then

q tradedata.q -p 5001
q)show trade
sec  price    volume exchange date
----------------------------------------
ACME 89.5897  1300   6.58303  2005.04.26
ABC  4.346879 2000   5.957694 2004.03.08
DEF  2.486644 1000   5.304114 2004.03.18
ACME 42.26209 1600   5.31383  2004.03.14
DEF  67.79352 2500   5.954478 2004.04.21
DEF  85.56155 1300   6.462338 2004.03.15
ACME 52.65432 1800   5.240313 2005.02.05
ABC  22.43142 2700   5.088007 2005.03.13
ABC  58.26731 2100   5.220929 2004.09.10
XYZ  74.14568 2900   5.075229 2004.08.24
DEF  35.67741 1500   6.064387 2004.03.12
DEF  30.37496 1300   5.025874 2004.03.24
ABC  20.30781 1000   6.642873 2005.02.02
DEF  2.984627 1200   6.346634 2004.12.15
ACME 28.80098 2100   5.591732 2004.09.19
DEF  45.20084 2800   5.481197 2004.08.01
DEF  29.25037 1000   6.065474 2005.02.05
XYZ  50.68805 1700   6.901464 2004.11.02
DEF  41.79832 2300   6.016484 2005.05.04
XYZ  13.64856 2900   6.435824 2005.04.03
..
q)

The Matlab integration depends on the two Java files c.jar and jdbc.jar. For the purposes of this recipe, we assume this is available on the machine Matlab is running on, at C:\q\jdbc.jar.

KxSystems/kdb/c/c.jar
KxSystems/kdb/c/jdbc.jar

We then start a new Matlab session. From here on, >> represents the Matlab prompt.

Connecting to a q process

We assume a kdb+ process running on the local host on port 5001 and that the jdbc.jar is installed.

First we need to add the JAR file to the classpath used by Matlab. We can either permanently add it by editing classpath.txt (type edit classpath.txt at the Matlab prompt) or for the duration of a particular session using the javaaddpath function. We’ll use the latter here.

>> javaaddpath /home/myusername/jdbc.jar
>> javaaddpath /home/myusername/c.jar

Installation directory

In these examples change /home/myusername to the directory where jdbc.jar and c.jar are installed.

Alternatively, this can be achieved in a Matlab source file (i.e., *.m file) adding the following two functions before calling kx functions.

javaaddpath('/home/myusername/jdbc.jar')
javaaddpath('/home/myusername/c.jar')

We can confirm that we’ve added this successfully using the javaclasspath function.

>> javaclasspath
    STATIC JAVA PATH
...
    /opt/matlab/2015b/java/jar/toolbox/stats.jar
    /opt/matlab/2015b/java/jar/toolbox/symbol.jar

    DYNAMIC JAVA PATH

    /home/myusername/jdbc.jar
    /home/myusername/c.jar
>>

We’re now ready to open a connection to the q process:

>> q = kx('localhost',5001)

q =

       handle: [1x1 c]
    ipaddress: 'localhost'
         port: 5001

Credentials

We can also pass a username:password string as the third parameter to the kx function if it is required to log in to the q process.

The q value is a normal Matlab object and we can inspect the listed properties. We’ll use this value in all our communications with the q process.

We close a connection using the close function:

>> close(q)

Installation errors

If there is a problem with either the installation of the q integration, or the jar file is not found, we’ll get an error along the lines of:

??? Undefined function or method 'c' for input arguments of type 'char'.

Error in ==> kx.kx at 51
    w.handle = c(ip,p);

Or if the socket is not currently connected then any future communications will result in an error like:

??? Java exception occurred:
java.net.SocketException: Socket closed

    at java.net.SocketOutputStream.socketWrite(Unknown Source)

    at java.net.SocketOutputStream.write(Unknown Source)

    at c.w(c.java:99)

    at c.k(c.java:107)

    at c.k(c.java:108)

Error in ==> kx.fetch at 65
    t = c.handle.k(varargin{1});

Using the kdb+ process

It is typical to perform basic interactions with a database using the fetch function via a connected handle. For example in a legacy database we might perform this:

x = fetch(q,'select * from tablename')

We can use this function to perform basic interaction with kdb+, where we expect a value to be returned. This need not be a query but in fact can be general chunks of code. Using q as a calculator, we can compute the average of 0 to 999.

>> fetch(q,'avg til 1000')

ans =

  499.5000

Fetching data from kdb+

The fetch function can be used to get q data such as lists, as well as tables. Given the list c:

q)c:((til 100);(til 100))
q)c
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 ..
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 ..

Then we can fetch it:

>> hundreds = fetch(q, 'c')

hundreds =

java.lang.Object[]:
    [100x1 int32]
    [100x1 int32]

We can use the cell function to strip the Java array wrapper away:

>> hundreds_as_cell = cell(hundreds)

hundreds_as_cell =

    [100x1 int32]
    [100x1 int32]

>>

Tables are returned as an object with an array property for each column. Taking the first 10 rows of the trade table as an example:

q) 10 # trade
sec  price    volume exchange date
----------------------------------------
ACME 89.5897  1300   6.58303  2005.04.26
ABC  4.346879 2000   5.957694 2004.03.08
DEF  2.486644 1000   5.304114 2004.03.18
ACME 42.26209 1600   5.31383  2004.03.14
DEF  67.79352 2500   5.954478 2004.04.21
DEF  85.56155 1300   6.462338 2004.03.15
ACME 52.65432 1800   5.240313 2005.02.05
ABC  22.43142 2700   5.088007 2005.03.13
ABC  58.26731 2100   5.220929 2004.09.10
XYZ  74.14568 2900   5.075229 2004.08.24

Will be returned in Matlab:

>> ten = fetch(q, '10 # trade')

ten =

         sec: {10x1 cell}
       price: [10x1 double]
      volume: [10x1 int32]
    exchange: [10x1 double]
        date: [10x1 double]

With suitable computation in q, we can return data suitable for immediate plotting. Here we compute a 10-item moving average over the `ACME prices:

q)mavg[10;exec price from trade where sec=`ACME]
89.5897 65.9259 61.50204 53.32677 54.74408 57.39743 57.15958 62.33525 56.8732..
>> plot (fetch(q,'mavg[10;exec price from trade where sec=`ACME]'))

Metadata

The q integration in Matlab provides the tables meta function.

>> tables(q)

ans =

    'intraday'
    'seclist'
    'trade'

The experienced q user can use the \v command to see all values in the directory:

>> fetch(q,'\v')

ans =

    'a'
    'b'
    'c'
    'intraday'
    'n'
    'seclist'
    'secs'
    'trade'

Sending data to q

We can use the fetch function to cause side effects in the kdb+ process, such as inserting data into a table.

Given a table b:

q)show b
a b
---
1 1
2 2

Then we can add a row like this:

>> fetch(q,'b,:(3;3)')

ans =

     []

and, sure enough, on the q side we see the new data:

q)show b
a b
---
1 1
2 2
3 3

The q integration also provides an insert function: this takes an array of items in the row and may be more convenient for certain purposes.

>> insert(q,'b',{4,4})

shows on the q side as:

q)show b
a b
---
1 1
2 2
3 3
4 4

A more complicated row shows the potential advantage to better effect:

>> insert(q,'TRADE',{'`ACME',100.45,400,.0453,'2005.04.28'})

Be warned though, that errors will not be detected very well. For example the following expression silently fails!

>> insert(q,'b',{1,2,3})

whereas the equivalent fetch call provokes an error:

>> fetch(q,'b,:(1;2;3)')
??? Java exception occurred:
c$KException: length

    at c.k(c.java:106)

    at c.k(c.java:107)

    at c.k(c.java:108)

Error in ==> kx.fetch at 65
    t = c.handle.k(varargin{1});

Moving data from one source to another

As an example of moving data from one source to another, let us get a MSFT quote from Yahoo! and insert it into our q table of data.

First we connect to Yahoo! and get the quote:

>> y = yahoo

y =

     url: 'http://quote.yahoo.com'
      ip: []
    port: []

>> msft = fetch(y,'MSFT')

msft =

    Symbol: {'MSFT'}
      Last: 30.7200
      Date: 733064
      Time: 0.6674
    Change: -0.3900
      Open: 31.0600
      High: 31.1200
       Low: 30.5100
    Volume: 50928424

And then we insert it to a suitable table in q:

>> fetch(q,'yahoo_data:([symbol:`symbol$()];high:`float$();low:`float$())')
>> insert(q,'yahoo_data',{'`MSFT', msft.High, msft.Low})

And do the same for an IBM quote:

>> ibm = fetch(y,'IBM')

ibm =

    Symbol: {'IBM'}
      Last: 97.0900
      Date: 733064
      Time: 0.6660
    Change: 0.9200
      Open: 96.4200
      High: 97.2300
       Low: 96.1200
    Volume: 10474800

>> insert(q,'yahoo_data',{'`IBM', ibm.High, ibm.Low})

Finally, let’s check the average high for the data we’re tracking:

>> fetch(q,'select avg high from yahoo_data')

ans =

    high: 64.1750

Async commands to q

The exec function is used for sending asynchronous commands to q; ones we do not expect a response to, and which may be performed in the background while we continue interacting with the Matlab process.

Here we establish a large-ish data structure in the kdb+ process:

>> exec(q,'big_data:10000000?100')

Then we take the average of the data, delete it from the namespace and close the connection:

>> fetch(q,'avg big_data')

ans =

   49.4976

>> exec(q,'delete big_data from `.')
>> close(q)

Getting more help

Start with help kx in your Matlab session and also see help kx.fetch and so on for further details of the integration.