ILOG's OPL-CPLEX Development System can import data and export optimized solutions to databases and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Excel spreadsheets are accessed through specified cell references or named ranges. For larger data sources, the OPL-CPLEX Development System can access major relational databases through SQL commands in an OPL data source. A clean separation of the model and the data values makes it easy to switch between data sources and migrate from test data to a production database.

Data preparation and manipulation with OPL is powerful and efficient. ILOG OPL supports both arrays and sets of data, and external database tables are naturally mapped to Tuple sets. Tuples, like databases, support primary and foreign keys, allowing for efficient model execution. Writing constraints and goals by referencing fine-grained sets of valid possibilities supports precision slicing, allowing models to solve problems more quickly, and eliminating the need to write unnecessary code.

ILOG OPL makes it easy to quickly access data from Microsoft Excel as well as enterprise databases, or a combination of both.