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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…
The wealth of functionality in the Excel software package means it can go beyond use as a static evaluator of predefined cell formulae, to be used actively in manipulating and transforming data. Due to human error it is impossible to ensure…
This paper introduces a procedure based on genetic programming to evolve XSLT programs (usually called stylesheets or logicsheets). XSLT is a general purpose, document-oriented functional language, generally used to transform XML documents…
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…
This paper discusses spreadsheets documentation and new means to achieve this end by using Excel's built-in "Comment" function. By structuring comments, they can be used as an essential tool to fully explain spreadsheet. This will greatly…
The spreadsheet paradigm has some unique risks and challenges that are not present in more traditional development technologies. Many of the recent advances in other branches of software development have bypassed spreadsheets and…
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…
Spreadsheets provide a flexible and easy to use software development environment, but that leads to error proneness. Work has been done to prevent errors in spreadsheets, including using models to specify distinct parts of a spreadsheet as…
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…
Spreadsheets often need changing in ways made tedious and risky by Excel. For example: simultaneously altering many tables' size, orientation, and position; inserting cross-tabulations; moving data between sheets; splitting and merging…
Selecting a subset of cells is a common task in data engineering, for example, to remove errors or select only specific parts of a table. Multiple approaches to express this selection exist. One option is numeric indexing, commonly found in…
Seasoned Excel developers were invited to participate in a challenge to implement a spreadsheet with multi-dimensional variables. We analyzed their spreadsheet to see the different implement strategies employed. We identified two…
Amongst the large number of write-and-throw-away spreadsheets developed for one-time use there is a rather neglected proportion of spreadsheets that are huge, periodically used, and submitted to regular update-cycles like any conventionally…
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…
We have prototyped a "spreadsheet component repository" Web site, from which users can copy "components" into their own Excel or Google spreadsheets. Components are collections of cells containing formulae: in real life, they would do…
Spreadsheets are one of the most widely used programming environments, and are widely deployed in domains like finance where errors can have catastrophic consequences. We present a static analysis specifically designed to find spreadsheet…
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…
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…
Over the last decades, the amount of data of all kinds available electronically has increased dramatically. Data are accessible through a range of interfaces including Web browsers, database query languages, application-specific interfaces,…
Modern spreadsheet systems can be used to implement complex spreadsheet applications including data sheets, customized user forms and executable procedures written in a scripting language. These applications are often developed by…