Authors
Jacome Cunha, Joao Saraiva, & Joost Visser
Abstract
Although spreadsheets can be seen as a flexible programming environment, they lack some of the concepts of regular programming languages, such as structured data types. This can lead the user to edit the spreadsheet in a wrong way and perhaps cause corrupt or redundant data.
We devised a method for extraction of a relational model from a spreadsheet and the subsequent embedding of the model back into the spreadsheet to create a model-based spreadsheet programming environment.
The extraction algorithm is specific for spreadsheets since it considers particularities such as layout and column arrangement. The extracted model is used to generate formulas and visual elements that are then embedded in the spreadsheet helping the user to edit data in a correct way.
We present preliminary experimental results from applying our approach to a sample of spreadsheets from the EUSES Spreadsheet Corpus.
Sample
The columns corresponding to primary keys in the relational model determine the values of other columns; we want the spreadsheet environment to be able to automatically fill those columns provided the end-user defines the value of the primary key.
Publication
2012, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 7554, pages 117-133
