Visual Specifications of Correct Spreadsheets

Abraham, Robin; Erwig, Martin; Kollmansberger, Steve; Seifert, E.

doi:10.1109/vlhcc.2005.70

Cited by 37 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…This approach, implemented in the Gencel system [21], [69], captures a spreadsheet and all its possible evolutions in a template developed in the Visual Template Specification Language (ViTSL) [70]. In the case of spreadsheets generated using this approach, the user does not ever have to edit the spreadsheet formulas since they are automatically generated by the system based on the template.…”

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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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mutation Operators for Spreadsheets

Abraham

Erwig

2009

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

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“…We have developed a visual notation (called Vitsl for Visual Template Specification Language) to describe spreadsheet templates that capture the essential structure of a spreadsheet and all of its future versions. The user can develop spreadsheet templates using a visual interface to Vitsl [3]. A template can then be imported into Gencel [12,13] which translates it into an initial spreadsheet instance, together with customized update operations for insertion/deletion of rows and columns.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

UCheck: A spreadsheet type checker for end users

Abraham

Erwig

2007

Journal of Visual Languages & Computing

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Spreadsheets are widely used, and studies have shown that most end-user spreadsheets contain non-trivial errors. Most of the currently available tools that try to mitigate this problem require varying levels of user intervention. This paper presents a system, called UCheck, that detects errors in spreadsheets automatically. UCheck carries out automatic header and unit inference, and reports unit errors to the users. UCheck is based on two static analyses phases that infer header and unit information for all cells in a spreadsheet.We have tested UCheck on a wide variety of spreadsheets and found that it works accurately and reliably. The system was also used in a continuing education course for high school teachers, conducted through Oregon State University, aimed at making the participants aware of the need for quality control in the creation of spreadsheets.

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“…For example, in order to be able to use the specification-based approach to the generation of safe spreadsheets [12], the user has to learn the specification language [4]. Sometimes these systems have only limited expressiveness.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a final traversal 4 we can collect all the constraints along each path and attach the resulting conditions to the leaf expressions, which results in a constraint tree, shown in Figure 3(c). For a condition or expression to be executed, the constraint attached to it has to be satisfied.…”

Section: Expression and Constraint Treesmentioning

confidence: 99%