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Context: Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) uses scenarios written in semi-structured natural language to express software requirements in a way that can be understood by all stakeholders. The resulting natural language specifications can…
Spreadsheets are ubiquitous, heavily relied on throughout vast swathes of finance, commerce, industry, academia and Government. They are also acknowledged to be extraordinarily and unacceptably prone to error. If these two points are…
Spreadsheet software is the tool of choice for interactive ad-hoc data management, with adoption by billions of users. However, spreadsheets are not scalable, unlike database systems. On the other hand, database systems, while highly…
Previous research on spreadsheet risks has predominantly focussed on errors inadvertently introduced by spreadsheet writers i.e. it focussed on the end-user aspects of spreadsheet development. When analyzing a faulty spreadsheet, one might…
Sketching is an important means of communication in software engineering practice. Yet, there is little research investigating the use of sketches. We want to contribute a better understanding of sketching, in particular its use during…
There is overwhelming evidence that the continued and widespread use of untested spreadsheets in business gives rise to regular, significant and unexpected financial losses. Whilst this is worrying, it is perhaps a relatively minor concern…
Coding agents can generate web applications from natural-language descriptions, yet a recent benchmark study shows that generated applications fail to meet functional requirements in over 70% of cases. The core difficulty is that web…
Recent Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated significant capabilities in generating code snippets directly from problem statements. This increasingly automated process mirrors traditional human-led software development, where code…
In today's society, we are becoming increasingly dependent on software systems. However, we also constantly witness the negative impacts of buggy software. Program synthesis aims to improve software correctness by automatically generating…
Modern ERP systems contain flexible report generators but the tendency exists for users to export data to spreadsheets for manipulation, reporting and decision making. A purported reason for this is that some users are more familiar with…
The continuous software engineering paradigm is gaining popularity in modern development practices, where the interleaving of design and runtime activities is induced by the continuous evolution of software systems. In this context,…
A new MS Excel application has been developed which seeks to reduce the risks associated with the development, operation and auditing of Excel spreadsheets. FormulaDataSleuth provides a means of checking spreadsheet formulas and data as…
The term Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is typically used to describe software development approaches in which abstract models of software systems are created and systematically transformed to concrete implementations. In this paper we give…
Because spreadsheets have a large and growing importance in real-world work, their contents need to be controlled and validated. Generally spreadsheets have been difficult to verify, since data and executable information are stored…
Previous spreadsheet inspection experiments have had human subjects look for seeded errors in spreadsheets. In this study, subjects attempted to find errors in human-developed spreadsheets to avoid the potential artifacts created by error…
Background: Research software plays an important role in solving real-life problems, empowering scientific innovations, and handling emergency situations. Therefore, the correctness and trustworthiness of research software are of absolute…
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…
Accuracy in spreadsheet modelling systems can be reduced due to difficulties with the inputs, the model itself, or the spreadsheet implementation of the model. When the "true" outputs from the system are unknowable, accuracy is evaluated…
Heavy use of spreadsheets by organisations bears many potential risks such as errors, ambiguity, data loss, duplication, and fraud. In this paper these risks are briefly outlined along with their available mitigation methods such as:…