Authors
Dietmar Jannach, Thomas Schmitz, & Kostyantyn Shchekotykhin
Abstract
Spreadsheet applications are often developed in a comparably unstructured process without rigorous quality assurance mechanisms. Faults in spreadsheets are therefore common and finding the true causes of an unexpected calculation outcome can be tedious already for small spreadsheets.
The goal of the Exquisite project is to provide spreadsheet developers with better tool support for fault identification. Exquisite is based on an algorithmic debugging approach relying on the principles of Model-Based Diagnosis and is designed as a plug-in to MS Excel.
In this paper, we give an overview of the project, outline open challenges, and sketch different approaches for the interactive minimization of the set of fault candidates.
Sample
The intended formula in cell C2 should be an addition, but the developer made a typo.
When testing the spreadsheet with the inputs A1=1, A2=6 and the expected output C1=20, the user notices an unexpected output (36) in C1.
Model-Based Diagnosis (MBD) reasoning aims to find minimal subsets of the possibly faulty components which can explain the observed discrepancy.
Publication
2014, First Workshop on Software Engineering Methods in Spreadsheets, July
