Experimental studies have pointed out that operational spreadsheets contain a lot of errors, mostly due to the lack of abstraction offered by existing spreadsheet programs. In this paper, we consider the specification of a spreadsheet using a database query language and the generation of the corresponding running spreadsheet. We present a technique to perform this generation automatically, allo...

Across an aggregation of EuSpRIG presentation papers, two maxims hold true: spreadsheets models are akin to software, yet spreadsheet developers are not software engineers. As such, the lack of traditional software engineering tools and protocols invites a higher rate of error in the end result. This paper lays ground work for spreadsheet modelling professionals to develop reproducible audit to...

Spreadsheets are used extensively within today’s organisations. Although spreadsheets have many benefits, they can also present a significant risk exposure, requiring appropriate management. Protiviti has worked with a number of organisations, ranging in size up to huge multi-nationals, to help them build appropriate spreadsheet governance frameworks, including the design and implementation of ...

Fifteen years of research studies have concluded unanimously that spreadsheet errors are both common and non-trivial. Now we must seek ways to reduce spreadsheet errors. Several approaches have been suggested, some of which are promising and others, while appealing because they are easy to do, are not likely to be effective. To date, only one technique, cell-by-cell code inspection, has been de...

Spreadsheets are ubiquitous end-user programming tools, but lack even the simplest abstraction mechanism: The ability to encapsulate a computation as a function. This paper presents a solution in the form of sheetdefined functions, which are built from well-known spreadsheet cells, formulas and references. They should be understandable to most spreadsheet users, yet offer far more programming p...

While spreadsheets are widely used, they have been found to be error-prone. Various techniques have been proposed to detect anomalies in spreadsheets, with varying scopes and effectiveness. Nevertheless, there is no empirical study comparing these techniques’ practical usefulness and effectiveness. In this work, we conducted a large-scale empirical study of three state-of-the-art techniques on ...

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 e...

Computations performed using end-user developed spreadsheets have resulted in serious errors and represent a major control risk to organizations. Literature suggests that factors contributing to spreadsheet errors include developer inexperience, poor design approaches, application types, problem complexity, time pressure, and presence or absence of review procedures. We explore the impact of us...

Spreadsheets are widely used in industry, even for critical business processes. This implies the need for proper risk assessment in spreadsheets to evaluate the reliability and validity of the spreadsheet’s outcome. As related research has shown, the risk of spreadsheet errors is strongly related to the spreadsheet’s complexity. Therefore, spreadsheet researchers proposed various metrics for qu...

The reliability of end-user developed spreadsheets is poor. Research studies find that 94% of ‘real-world’ spreadsheets contain errors. Although some research has been conducted in the area of spreadsheet testing, little is known about the behaviour or processes of individuals during the debugging task. In this paper, the authors investigate the performance and behaviour of expert and novice en...