MT5 has a new integrated development environment called MQL5 which includes MetaEditor 5, MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester and MetaQuotes Language 5 (MQL5). Unfortunately the MQL4 and MQL5 languages are not compatible. This means that every custom indicator and EA must be rewritten to work with Metatrader 5. It is not clear yet if there will be a tool which converts the MQL4 source code to MQL5 or allows MQL4 executables to run in MT5. The official statement of MetaQuotes about this:

You should also understand that we doing it not to make you redo the EA developments every time when we launching a new platform. From the beginning of Metatrader 5 development we thought that we will be able to save the compatibility. And we said about it many times. But the numerous traders/developers requests made us change our mind. We`ve understood that just cant make a new language compatible. At the same time we have made MQL5 more powerful and in this way we gave you, traders and developers, more abilities - that was our main goal in developing of MQL5 IDE. From one side new language with the new abilities and from the other side - MQL4 and MQL5 compatibility. Unfortunately, these two aims cant be reached at the same time.

According to MetaQuotes, the MQL5 language is distinct for high speed of execution and approaches C++ in terms of this parameter. As compared to MQL4, the new language boasts up to 20 times faster execution speed. We know that execution speed is everything when developing ea's and scripts that sometimes need to crunch huge amounts of data in conjunction with real-time price movements. MQL5 is now more object oriented, what makes the development of EAs quicker, easier and more flexible, especially for autotrader developers. This also allows using more complex EA's able to process large amounts of data per time unit and therefore obtain more precise forecasts of price dynamics. The MQL5 programming environment incorporates intellisense system which, as most developers would agree, speeds up the development process. It also has a built-in debugger for testing and quickly find errors and fix them. The MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester will not be much different from the tester in MT4 besides more advanced report system.

metatrader 5

5 comments

Bogdan said... @ June 27, 2009 at 10:43 AM

"The MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester will not be much different from the tester in MT4 besides more advanced report system."

If this means no multiasset backtesting like in MT4, really sounds bleak.

Unknown said... @ June 28, 2009 at 5:23 AM

It will be multiasset testing one.

Bogdan said... @ June 28, 2009 at 10:42 AM

You're very sure on yourself with this affirmation. If you're from MetaQuotes, this is realy releaving news.

Anonymous said... @ August 8, 2009 at 8:56 AM

So is an MT5 backtest going to run 10 X faster than an MT4 backtest?

Unknown said... @ October 15, 2009 at 8:51 PM

It looks that debugger works only with EA and scripts but not with indicators.

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