Octave as a replacement for Excel

[babelproofreader]

I am currently using Excel to download stock/commodity prices and then
calculate various market indicators etc (using the normal Excel spreadsheet
functions) and then graphically plot the output. However, due to the amount
of data contained in the spreadsheet and the intensive number crunching
involved in calculating the various indicators, the speed of calculation
within the spreadsheet has slowed down to such an extent that it is becoming
impractical to use on a daily basis, and so I am searching for a replacement
to this way of doing things. 

My question is; would it be possible to use Octave to do all the heavy duty
number crunching? What I envisage is simply using Excel or some other
spreadsheet just to download daily price data into a database, or perhaps
CSV or txt files, and then use this database or these files as input, via
scripts, into Octave to do all the indicator calculations for subsequent
plotting via Gnuplot, for example. Would this approach be doable, and if so,
would there be a worthwhile increase in calculation speed? 
-- 
View this message in context: 
http://www.nabble.com/Octave-as-a-replacement-for-Excel-tp19188413p19188413.html
Sent from the Octave - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.