Related papers: Audit and Change Analysis of Spreadsheets
Spreadsheet technology is a cornerstone of IT systems in most organisations. It is often the glue that binds more structured transaction-based systems together. Financial operations are a case in point where spreadsheets fill the gaps left…
It is widely documented that the absence of a structured approach to spreadsheet engineering is a key factor in the high level of spreadsheet errors. In this paper we propose and investigate the application of Test-Driven Development to the…
We developed an internet-based questionnaire on spreadsheet use that we administered to a large number of users in several companies and organizations to document how spreadsheets are currently being developed and used in business. In this…
A central challenge in science is to understand how systems behaviors emerge from complex networks. This often requires aggregating, reusing, and integrating heterogeneous information. Supplementary spreadsheets to articles are a key data…
Refactoring is a change made to the internal structure of software to make it easier to understand and cheaper to modify without changing its observable behaviour. A database refactoring is a small change to the database schema which…
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…
Microsoft Excel is the most ubiquitous analytical tool ever built. Companies around the world leverage it for its power, flexibility and ease of use. However, spreadsheets are manually intensive and prone to error, making it difficult for…
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…
Across an aggregation of EuSpRIG presentation papers, two maxims hold true: spreadsheets models are akin to software, yet spreadsheet developers are not software engineers. As such, the lack of traditional software engineering tools and…
Research on formulae production in spreadsheets has established the practice as high risk yet unrecognised as such by industry. There are numerous software applications that are designed to audit formulae and find errors. However these are…
Spreadsheets are widely used, and studies have shown that most end-user spreadsheets contain nontrivial errors. To improve end-users productivity, recent research proposes the use of a model-driven engineering approach to spreadsheets. In…
Context: Interest in diversity in software development has significantly increased in recent years. Reporting on diversity in software projects can enhance user trust and assist regulators in evaluating adoption. Recent AI directives…
To aid the development of spreadsheet debugging tools, a knowledge of end-users natural behaviour within the Excel environment would be advantageous. This paper details the design and application of a novel data acquisition tool, which can…
During the life cycle of an XML application, both schemas and queries may change from one version to another. Schema evolutions may affect query results and potentially the validity of produced data. Nowadays, a challenge is to assess and…
The causes of the reproducibility crisis include lack of standardization and transparency in scientific reporting. Checklists such as ARRIVE and CONSORT seek to improve transparency, but they are not always followed by authors and peer…
Critical software systems face stringent requirements in safety, security, and reliability due to the circumstances surrounding their operation. Safety and security have progressively gained importance over the years due to the integration…
A business case study on how three simple guidelines: 1. Make it easy to check (and maintain) 2. Make it safe to use 3. Keep business logic out of code changed user attitudes and improved spreadsheet quality in a financial services…
This paper presents the findings of a case study of spreadsheet use in a higher education institution in the UK. The paper considers the use of spreadsheets in two units of the organisation, academic registry and finance. Spreadsheet use is…
We report the results of a project to control the use of end user computing tools for business critical applications in a banking environment. Several workstreams were employed in order to bring about a cultural change within the bank…
This paper outlines an approach to manage and quantify the risks associated with changes made to spreadsheets. The methodology focuses on structural differences between spreadsheets and suggests a technique by which a risk analysis can be…