Most trading applications receive datafeed from commerical providers such as IQFeed or brokerages that support trading API. Is there merit in storing it in the local database? Intraday datafeed is just massive in size, and the database would grow exponentially with 1 minute data for just 50 stocks, never mind tick-by-tick data. I suspect this would be a nightmare for database backup and may impact performance.
If you get historical data in text files on DVD or online, then storing it in the database is the only logical choice, but would it be still a good idea if you get it through API?
Its all about storage space really. You can definitely do it through API, but make sure you don’t do it using the same application that is doing the automated trading for you.
As you said Tick Data is pretty much out of question, for a 1 minute data that would mean approximately 400 bars/day and 20000 bars for 50 symbols.
The calculation space can be calculated based on that, if you are storing OLHC it can be achieved with four values of type Int.
As the other answer pointed out, performance may be an issue with more and more symbols but shouldn’t be a problem with 50 symbols on 1 minute bars.