Affiliation:
1. New York Univ., New York, NY
Abstract
In spite of the increasing sophistication and power of commercial spreadsheet packages, we still lack a formal theory or a methodology to support the construction and maintenance of spreadsheet models. Using a dual logical/physical perspective, we identify four principal components that characterize any spread sheet model:
schema, data, editorial,
and
binding
. We present a
factoring
algorithm for identifying and extracting these components from conventional spreadsheets with minimal user intervention, and a
synthesis
algorithm that assists users in the construction of executable spreadsheets from reusable model components. This approach opens new possibilities for applying object-oriented and model management techniques to support the construction, sharing, and reuse of spreadsheet models in organizations. Importantly, our approach to model management and the Windows-based prototype that we have developed are designed to
coexist
with, rather than
replace
, traditional spreadsheet programs. In other words, the users are not required to learn a new modeling language; instead, their logical models and data sets are extracted from their spreadsheets transparently, as a side-effect of using standard spreadsheet programs.
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Subject
Computer Science Applications,General Business, Management and Accounting,Information Systems
Cited by
26 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献