A Semantic Meta Model of Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are widely used as decision support systems. However, as numerous studies have shown, many of them contain errors. A major reason for this is the lack of an explicit design of the data model, which at the same time ensures flexibility and is one of the defining features of the spreadsheet paradigm. Therefore, in recent years many approaches to model-driven spreadsheet development emerged addressing this issue. In this paper, we propose a meta model which defines how the semantic models of today’s spreadsheets can be described. Thereby, it builds on the foundations of related approaches to model-driven spreadsheet development, and also captures semantic patterns of spreadsheets typically occurring in practice. Based on this semantic meta model, novel spreadsheet solutions can address concrete semantic patterns and thus reduce the risk of errors on the one hand, and improve the usability of spreadsheets on the other hand.