The I.T. Girl by Fiona Pearse Read Free Book Online

work with the larger volume
but it meant the tests would be more accurate.
    Every negative result felt like a little reprieve but it was
replaced with a fresh batch of nerves; I still had no idea what the problem was.
Desperate, I began taking individual modules of code and testing them as isolated
cases. I had to find something that was causing memory to bloat and slow down the
feed. I noticed people coming back from lunch and realised no one had invited me.
This was the first time I had been involved in a live problem. It felt like a landslide.
    Complaints and queries about progress were still popping up on
my screen but I was running out of answers. Ignoring them I began trawling over
my code. I mentally stepped through each algorithm calculating what it was doing
and what could possibly go wrong.
    Boris was back at my cube. ‘We’ve got to get this fixed before
New York opens and we’re flooded with US activity.’
    ‘New York opens in half an hour Boris. We’re not going to solve
the problem, test it and roll it out in that time.’
    ‘Well, do you have any move on? Any update?’
    ‘It looks like my feed has some major memory issue slowing everything
down.’ I dropped my head into my hands. ‘But my performance analysis isn’t showing
any memory leaks.’
    ‘Let’s have a look,’ Boris said pulling up a chair.
    I showed him my test results, explaining what each module was
doing and how the results showed normal behaviour. We stepped through the large
algorithms together, just in case I had missed something.
    ‘How high is the memory usage now?’ Boris asked, out of ideas.
    I ran the command to check memory on the live server.
    ‘It’s down to five per cent.’ I narrowed my eyes.
    ‘What? That’s good, right?’
    I ran the command again ‘Back up to forty-five per cent. Not
good.’ I licked panic off my lips and opened the log file looking for error messages.
‘Another skipped packet,’ I read. ‘Oh.’ I jumped and slapped my forehead. ‘The memory’s
not too high, Boris. Every time there’s a dropped packet, there’s a fluctuation
in memory.’ I felt sick thinking of the time I had wasted.
    ‘But why?’ Boris pressed.
    ‘Because METX requested we process the packets of data in sequence...
So, when there’s a missing packet, the feed halts processing and shoots a message
off to the Exchange server looking for it. Then the feed just sits and waits for
it to arrive. But in the meantime, newer packets are still arriving and they have
to be held on a queue, each one taking up memory.’ I shrugged helplessly. ‘Then
the missing packet arrives, all the packets get processed and all the memory is
released.’
    ‘Then why is your feed skipping packets in the first place? That’s the real question.’
    ‘No.’ I said firmly. ‘The question is correct. Why is my feed
not performing fast enough? But, it’s got nothing to do with memory. The memory
fluctuation is a symptom not the cause. I’ve been chasing a red herring.’
    A bell tolled and the US market opened. I stared through my fingers
at the terminal imagining the New York trading beginning. Phones
starting to jump. Orders and trades entering the system. And then while I was still holding my breath, the delays got worse.
    ‘Oh, fuck,’ I said through my hands.
    ‘Fuck, fuck,’ Boris echoed next to me. ‘ Orla – what are you doing to me?’
    A new warning flashed on the screen.
    Tradeq currently experiencing delays
    ‘Whoa, what’s going on there?’ Boris grabbed the keyboard and
punched in the Tradeq keys.
    We watched the prices updating with a drag.
    ‘Boris,’ I braced myself. ‘I think Tradeq and METX are running on the same server.’
    ‘ Orla . Are
you telling me your feed is actually compromising the server it’s running on?’
    ‘It’s possible.’ I pulled the keyboard back and checked the server
statistics. The memory was high. I checked again. Still high. ‘It’s not going down.’
    ‘What’s not going