Applying Code Inspection to Spreadsheet Testing

Panko, Raymond R.

doi:10.1080/07421222.1999.11518250

Cited by 59 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Individual code inspection has been shown to find about half of all errors, so that group code inspection is needed. As Panko (1999) has shown, even group inspection helps only somewhat, although it helps especially for difficult-to-find errors. Other prescriptive methods have been put forth but have not been tested and so must be viewed somewhat skeptically.…”

Section: Implications For Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In three experiments that involved individual subjects code inspecting spreadsheets seeded with errors, subjects also caught about half of all errors or fewer (Galletta et al, 1993;Galletta, Hartzel, Johnson, & Joseph, 1997;Panko & Sprague, 1998). These studies, however, did not impose traditional time disciplines or a team code inspection phase.In one study (Panko, 1999), traditional time disciplines and a group inspection phase were used in a code inspection of a spreadsheet by undergraduate MIS majors. The individuals found 67% of all seeded errors in this study, and group code inspection brought the discovery rate to 92%.…”

Section: Errors Found and Missed In Code Inspectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

What We Know About Spreadsheet Errors

Panko

1998

Journal of Organizational and End User Computing

Self Cite

296

202

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Although spreadsheet programs are used for small "scratchpad" applications, they are also used to develop many large applications. In recent years, we have learned a good deal about the errors that people make when they develop spreadsheets. In general, errors seem to occur in a few percent of all cells, meaning that for large spreadsheets, the issue is how many errors there are, not whether an error exists. These error rates, although troubling, are in line with those in programming and other human cognitive domains. In programming, we have learned to follow strict development disciplines to eliminate most errors. Surveys of spreadsheet developers indicate that spreadsheet creation, in contrast, is informal, and few organizations have comprehensive policies for spreadsheet development. Although prescriptive articles have focused on such disciplines as modularization and having assumptions sections, these may be far less important than other innovations, especially cell-by-cell code inspection after the development phase.

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Section: Implications For Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Errors Found and Missed In Code Inspectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What We Know About Spreadsheet Errors

Panko

1998

Journal of Organizational and End User Computing

Self Cite

296

202

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“…Following traditional software engineering approaches, some researchers have recommended code inspection for detection and removal of errors from spreadsheets [12], [13], [14]. However, such approaches cannot give any guarantees about the correctness of the spreadsheet once the inspection has been carried out.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mutation Operators for Spreadsheets

Abraham

Erwig

2009

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

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Abstract-Based on 1) research into mutation testing for general-purpose programming languages and 2) spreadsheet errors that have been reported in the literature, we have developed a suite of mutation operators for spreadsheets. We present an evaluation of the mutation adequacy of definition-use adequate test suites generated by a constraint-based automatic test-case generation system we have developed in previous work. The results of the evaluation suggest additional constraints that can be incorporated into the system to target mutation adequacy. In addition to being useful in mutation testing of spreadsheets, the operators can be used in the evaluation of error-detection tools and also for seeding spreadsheets with errors for empirical studies. We describe two case studies where the suite of mutation operators helped us carry out such empirical evaluations. The main contribution of this paper is a suite of mutation operators for spreadsheets that can be used for performing empirical evaluations of spreadsheet tools to indicate ways in which the tools can be improved.

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“…Errors in spreadsheets may entail a serious economical impact, causing yearly losses worth around 10 billion Fig. 1: The Cardiogenic shock estimator spreadsheet dollars [18] 3 . This paper improves the state-of-the-art in spreadsheet debugging by proposing an approach for correcting faults in spreadsheets.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%