An Empirical Study on Spreadsheet Shortcomings from an Information Systems Perspective

Reschenhofer, Thomas; Matthes, Florian

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-19027-3_5

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…As strange as it sounds, a recent study presented these elements as part of MDE tool chains (Batory et al 2013b). Besides, some metamodels and models are represented in Excel Spreadsheets (Reschenhofer and Matthes 2015).…”

Section: Diversity In Mde Artifactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diversity of MDE Toolboxes and Their Uncommon Properties

Teixeira¹,

Lebtag²,

Basso³

2020

Anais Do Workshop Em Modelagem E Simulação De Sistemas Intensivos Em Software (MSSiS 2020)

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Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) has reached some maturity. Due to that, a high diversity of technologies and platforms have emerged to support the resolution of a range of problems and contexts in which MDEis adopted as a solution. As a consequence, when some level of reuse of those artifacts (such as model transformations, Domain-Specific Languages(DSLs) and refinement tools), difficulties are faced due to the high diversity of formats in which all those assets are specified. Since we noted this trend, we decided to search for instances in the literature that supports our hypothesis of a high degree of diversity in MDE artifacts in the state of the practice. Thus, we carried out an exploratory literature review. As a result, we summarized key studies used as input to build a search string adopted to structure a future systematic literature review. Our study contributes by classifying nine types of MDE toolboxes with uncommon properties than those usually found in MDE workbenches.

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Section: Diversity In Mde Artifactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diversity of MDE Toolboxes and Their Uncommon Properties

Teixeira¹,

Lebtag²,

Basso³

2020

Anais Do Workshop Em Modelagem E Simulação De Sistemas Intensivos Em Software (MSSiS 2020)

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“…Furthermore, when the data representation deviates from a simple tabular format, key spreadsheet features such as sorting, inserting, charting, filtering, or even simple navigation between individual units of data become hard or impossible to apply correctly. A recent empirical study [89] discusses additional problems that arise when organizations use spreadsheets as information systems. Extensive literature also exists on the broader topic of errors in spreadsheets [85,80].…”

Section: Spreadsheetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expressive Query Construction through Direct Manipulation of Nested Relational Results

Bakke

Karger

2016

Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Management of Data

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Despite extensive research on visual query systems, the standard way to interact with relational databases remains to be through SQL queries and tailored form interfaces. This makes the power of relational databases largely inaccessible to non-programmers. This thesis proposes a solution, in two parts.The first contribution of this thesis is a solution to the visual query language problem, that is, the problem of letting end users construct arbitrary database queries through a graphical user interface. We propose the first visual query language to simultaneously satisfy three requirements: (1) query specification through direct manipulation of results, (2) the ability to view and modify any part of the current query without departing from the direct manipulation interface, and (3) SQL-like expressiveness. By directly manipulating nested relational results, and using spreadsheet idioms such as formulas and filters, the user can express arbitrary SQL-92 queries while always remaining able to track and modify the state of the complete query.The second contribution of this thesis is an algorithm for automatically formatting nested relational data using the traditional visual idioms of hand-designed database UIs: tables, multi-column forms, and outline-style indented lists. The algorithm plugs directly into the output stage of our visual query language, and produces the concrete graphics that the user sees and manipulates on the screen during query construction. The algorithm eliminates the need for an application developer to specify low-level presentation details such as label placements, text field dimensions, table column widths, and list styles.Our prototype visual query system gives the user an experience of responsive, incremental query building while pushing all actual query processing to the database layer. We evaluate the query building aspects of our system with formative and controlled user studies on a total of 28 spreadsheet users. The controlled study shows our system outperforming Microsoft Access by 18 points on the System Usability Scale [17]; this corresponds to a 46 percentage point difference on a percentile scale of other studies in the Business Software category. We also evaluate the different layouts that can be produced by our automatic layout algorithm, including via an online user study on 27 subjects.

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“…Even in their most basic form, they act as a useful organizational aid, allowing users to record information in a two-dimensional tabular layout. With capabilities like formulae and macros to support complex calculations or automate processes, spreadsheets become indispensable as a comprehensive medium for data management and analysis [30].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At the same time, spreadsheets have problems: studies have shown that they foster errors [29,27], they are not able to easily express useful data operations, such as joins or filters [11,10], and they are known to be sluggish or crash when operating on very large datasets [30]. The last class of problems are what we call scalability problems, i.e., situations where users are unable to complete standard operations in a reasonable amount of time when the scale or complexity of the dataset increases [7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing Scalability Issues in Spreadsheet Software using Online Forums

Mack

Lee

Chang

et al. 2018

Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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In traditional usability studies, researchers talk to users of tools to understand their needs and challenges. Insights gained via such interviews offer context, detail, and background. Due to costs in time and money, we are beginning to see a new form of tool interrogation that prioritizes scale, cost, and breadth by utilizing existing data from online forums. In this case study, we set out to apply this method of using online forum data to a specific issue-challenges that users face with Excel spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are a versatile and powerful processing tool if used properly. However, with versatility and power come errors, from both users and the software, which make using spreadsheets less effective. By scraping posts from the website Reddit, we collected a dataset of questions and complaints about Excel. Specifically, we explored and characterized the issues users were facing with spreadsheet software in general, and in particular, as resulting from a large amount of data in their spreadsheets. We discuss the implications of our findings on the design of next-generation spreadsheet software.1

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An Empirical Study on Spreadsheet Shortcomings from an Information Systems Perspective

Cited by 4 publications

References 10 publications

Diversity of MDE Toolboxes and Their Uncommon Properties

Diversity of MDE Toolboxes and Their Uncommon Properties

Expressive Query Construction through Direct Manipulation of Nested Relational Results

Characterizing Scalability Issues in Spreadsheet Software using Online Forums

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