A logical spreadsheet is a spreadsheet in which the formula language is composed of logical expressions. Logical spreadsheets were invented shortly after traditional electronic spreadsheets were introduced, but since then logical spreadsheet research has been somewhat sparse. Recently, however, there has been a resurgence in interest of logical spreadsheets in the research community. In this ar...

Spreadsheets are used to develop application software that is distributed to users. Unfortunately, the users often have the ability to change the programming statements (“source code”) of the spreadsheet application. This causes a host of problems. By critically examining the suitability of spreadsheet computer programming languages for application development, six “application development feat...

This paper presents a toolkit for spreadsheet visualization based on logical areas, semantic classes and data modules. Logical areas, semantic classes and data modules are abstract representations of spreadsheet programs that are meant to reduce the auditing and comprehension effort, especially for large and regular spreadsheets. The toolkit is integrated as a plug-in in the Gnumeric spreadshee...

We present Risk Integrated's Enterprise Spreadsheet Platform (ESP), a technical approach to the near-elimination of spreadsheet risk in the enterprise computing environment, whilst maintaining the full flexibility of spreadsheets for modelling complex financial structures and processes. In its Basic Mode of use, the system comprises a secure and robust centralised spreadsheet management framewo...

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 bac...

Even though spreadsheet programs traditionally concentrate on exploration and computation of data (the author’s view), a non-trivial proportion of spreadsheets are used for communicating data, models, and decisions to humans who assume the role of a spreadsheet reader. The communicative use of spreadsheets gives the spreadsheet context, that is, the background knowledge needed to interpret and ...

The Spreadsheet CPU simulates a central processing unit for teaching purposes. The simulator provides interactive instruction execution like the “Little Man Computer,” the LC-3, and other simulators, but it is not a stand-alone program. Instead, it is implemented atop an off-the-shelf copy of the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet cells make it easy for students to observe the simulat...

Previous research on spreadsheet risks has predominantly focussed on errors inadvertently introduced by spreadsheet writers i.e. it focussed on the “end-user aspects” of spreadsheet development. When analyzing a faulty spreadsheet, one might not be able to determine whether a particular error (fault) has been made by mistake or with fraudulent intentions. However, the fences protecting against ...

This paper describes the rationale, curriculum and subject matter of a new MSc module being taught on an MSc Finance and Information Management course at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff. Academic research on spreadsheet risks now has some penetration in academic literature and there is a growing body of knowledge on the subjects of spreadsheet error, human factors, spreadsheet engi...

The research presented in this paper establishes a valid, and simplified, revision of previous spreadsheet error classifications. This investigation is concerned with the results of a web survey and two web-based gender and domain-knowledge free spreadsheet error identification exercises. The participants of the survey and exercises were a test group of professionals (all of whom regularly use ...