Convenient Data Options

Gathering the model's data and getting it in an appropriate format can be a frustrating and time consuming task, but with LINGO you can manage your data in a variety of convenient forms. LINGO lets you keep your data:

	in an Excel or Lotus spreadsheet file. For more information, see LINGO's Spreadsheet Capabilities.
	in a database such as Access, Oracle, DB/2, Paradox, SQL Server etc. For more information, see LINGO's Database Capabilities.
	in a separate text file in list or table form
	stored with the model expression
	entered by the user when the model is run

By providing a wide variety of data options, LINGO provides you with maximum flexibility and convenience. By allowing you to separate your expression of the problem from the data, LINGO models are easier to read and modify, and there is less chance of errors. It also makes prototyping problems on a smaller data set easy. Once you are comfortable with the model, you can easily swap in a larger set of data or several different data sets to investigate different scenarios.

LINGO's flexibility even makes creating reports easy. In addition to being able to read data from spreadsheets and databases, LINGO can also write solution information to these formats. This means that, rather than forcing you to learn some built-in report generator, you can simply output the solution to your application of choice for building reports and analyzing the output.