Stata is a multipurpose program, which can serve not only its own data, but also other data in a simple format, for example, ASCII. Regardless of the data type format (Excel/statistical package), it gets automatically exported to the ASCII file. This means that all the data can now easily be imported to Stata.

The data entered in Stata is in different types of variables, such as vectors with individual observations in every row; it also holds strings and numeric strings. Every row has a detailed observation of the individual, country, firm, or whatever information is entered in Stata.

As the data is stored in variables, it makes Stata the most efficient way to store information. Sometimes, it is better to save the data in a different storage form, such as the following:

Matrices should be used carefully as they consume more memory than variables, so there might be a possibility of low space memory before work is started.

Another form is macros; these are similar to variables in other programming languages and are named containers, which means they contain information of any type. There are two flavors of macros: local/temporary and global. Global macros are flexible and easy to manage; once they are defined in a computer or laptop, they can be easily opened through all commands. On the other hand, local macros are temporary objects that are formed for a particular environment and cannot be used in another area. For example, if you use a local macro for a do-file, that code will only exist in that particular environment.