Related papers: Spreadsheet Debugging
All users of spreadsheets struggle with the problem of errors. Errors are thought to be prevalent in spreadsheets, and in some instances they have cost organizations millions of dollars. In a previous study of 50 operational spreadsheets we…
Spreadsheets in financial markets are frequently used as database, calculator and reporting application combined. This paper describes an alternative approach in which spreadsheet design and database technology have been brought together in…
We believe the error prone nature of traditional spreadsheets is due to their low level of abstraction. End user programmers are forced to construct their data models from low level cells which we define as "a data container or manipulator…
Contemporary spreadsheets are plagued by a profusion of errors, auditing difficulties, lack of uniform development methodologies, and barriers to easy comprehension of the underlying business models they represent. This paper presents a…
Errors in spreadsheet applications and models are alarmingly common (some authorities, with justification cite spreadsheets containing errors as the norm rather than the exception). Faced with this body of evidence, the auditor can be faced…
Program errors are hard to find because of the cause-effect gap between the time when an error occurs and the time when the error becomes apparent to the programmer. Although debugging techniques such as conditional and data breakpoints…
We have developed the Model Master (MM) language for describing spreadsheets, and tools for converting MM programs to and from spreadsheets. The MM decompiler translates a spreadsheet into an MM program which gives a concise summary of its…
Spreadsheets are widely used in various fields to do large numerical analysis. While several companies have relied on spreadsheets for decades, data scientists are going in the direction of using scientific programming languages such as…
When an evolving program is modified to address issues related to thread synchronization, there is a need to confirm the change is correct, i.e., it does not introduce unexpected behavior. However, manually comparing two programs to…
The spreadsheet application is among the most widely used computing tools in modern society. It provides excellent usability and usefulness, and it easily enables a non-programmer to perform programming-like tasks in a visual tabular "pen…
This Paper summarises the operation of software developed for the analysis of workbook structure. This comprises: the identification of layout in terms of filled areas formed into "Stripes", the identification of all the Formula…
Although experts diverge on how best to improve spreadsheet quality, it is generally agreed that more time needs to be spent testing spreadsheets. Ideally, experienced and trained spreadsheet engineers would carry this out, but quite often…
Fault tolerance is a critical aspect of modern computing systems, ensuring correct functionality in the presence of faults. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of fault tolerance methods and software-based mitigation techniques in…
Spreadsheet engineering methodologies are diverse and sometimes contradictory. It is difficult for spreadsheet developers to identify a spreadsheet engineering methodology that is appropriate for their class of spreadsheet, with its unique…
Fault localization is a practical research topic that helps developers identify code locations that might cause bugs in a program. Most existing fault localization techniques are designed for imperative programs (e.g., C and Java) and rely…
In the modern world, we are permanently using, leveraging, interacting with, and relying upon systems of ever higher sophistication, ranging from our cars, recommender systems in e-commerce, and networks when we go online, to integrated…
In modern software development, vulnerability detection is crucial due to the inevitability of bugs and vulnerabilities in complex software systems. Effective detection and elimination of these vulnerabilities during the testing phase are…
The first fully-documented study into the quantitative impact of errors in operational spreadsheets identified an interesting anomaly. One of the five participating organisations involved in the study contributed a set of five spreadsheets…
Spreadsheets are widely used in industry, because they are flexible and easy to use. Often, they are even used for business-critical applications. It is however difficult for spreadsheet users to correctly assess the maintainability of…
Reliable numerical computations are central to scientific computing, but the floating-point arithmetic that enables large-scale models is error-prone. Numeric exceptions are a common occurrence and can propagate through code, leading to…