Skip to content

Explanation

This part of the documentation focuses on an understanding-oriented approach. You'll get a chance to read about the background of the project, as well as reasoning about how it was implemented.

The Theta Terminal

The Theta Terminal is an intermediate layer that bridges our data providing server with the Python API. The terminal runs as a background process. It hosts a local server on your machine, to which the Python API connects.

When you make a request using the Python API:

  • The API forwards the request to the Terminal (background process launched by the API).
  • The Terminal then forwards your request to the nearest thetadata MDDS (market data distribution server) and awaits a response.
  • The Terminal interprets the response and forwards the result to your Python application.
  • The Python API then parses the response header and body into a digestible format.

This intermediate-application approach has several benefits, but its most significant is that it separates data processing (i.e. decompression) with language-specific API features.