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The frequency with which spreadsheets are used and the associated risk is well known. Many tools and techniques have been developed which help reduce risks associate with creating and maintaining spreadsheet. However, little consideration…
Our term "structure discovery" denotes the recovery of structure, such as the grouping of cells, that was intended by a spreadsheet's author but is not explicit in the spreadsheet. We are implementing structure discovery tools in the…
A spreadsheet usually starts as a simple and single-user software artifact, but, as frequent as in other software systems, quickly evolves into a complex system developed by many actors. Often, different users work on different aspects of…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Spreadsheets are widely recognized as the most popular end-user programming tools, which blend the power of formula-based computation, with an intuitive table-based interface. Today, spreadsheets are used by billions of users to manipulate…
Legacy systems concentrate business rules, architectural decisions, and operational exceptions that often remain implicit in code, data, configuration, and maintenance practices. At the same time, language-model-based coding agents depend…
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…
In the last couple of years we have witnessed an enormous increase of machine learning (ML) applications. More and more program functions are no longer written in code, but learnt from a huge amount of data samples using an ML algorithm.…
Since the calculation engine of Excel was the subject of a major upgrade to accommodate Dynamic Arrays in 2018 there has been a series of seismic changes to the art of building spreadsheet solutions. This paper will show the ad-hoc end user…
A common application of spreadsheets is the development of models that deliver projections of the future financial statements of companies established to pursue ventures that are subject to project financing. A survey of 11 such…
The paper presents two complementary strategies for identifying errors in spreadsheet programs. The strategies presented are grounded on the assumption that spreadsheets are software, albeit of a different nature than conventional…
This paper presents a taxonomy for analytical spreadsheet models. It considers both the use case that a spreadsheet is meant to serve, and the engineering resources devoted to its development. We extend a previous three-type taxonomy, to…
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…
Reverse engineering is a complex process essential to software-security tasks such as vulnerability discovery and malware analysis. Significant research and engineering effort has gone into developing tools to support reverse engineers.…
In this paper, we report some on-going focused research, but are further keen to set it in the context of a proposed bigger picture, as follows. There is a certain depressing pattern about the attitude of industry to spreadsheet error…
This paper demonstrates a methodology to help practitioners maximise the utility of complex multidisciplinary engineering models implemented as spreadsheets, an area presenting unique challenges. As motivation we investigate the expanding…
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…