A Spreadsheet Unit Checker for End Users

Project Description

The goal of this project is to develop type systems for spreadsheets that (i) offer the advantages of static typing and are (ii) still usable by end users. To this end we have defined a unit system for spreadsheets that allows to reason about the correctness of formulas in concrete terms, which is achieved by using concrete values from the spreadsheet, for example, headers, as types (or units). A particular focus of our work is the flexibility of the unit system, both in terms of error reporting and adaptability of reasoning rules, to achieve a high acceptance among end users.

Selected Publications

Reasoning about Spreadsheets with Labels and Dimensions, Chris Chambers and Martin Erwig
Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, Vol. 21, No. 5, 249-262, 2010

Automatic Detection of Dimension Errors in Spreadsheets, Chris Chambers and Martin Erwig
Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, Vol. 20, No. 4, 269-283, 2009

Combining Spatial and Semantic Label Analysis, Chris Chambers and Martin Erwig
IEEE Int. Symp. on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, 225-232, 2009

Dimension Inference in Spreadsheets, Chris Chambers and Martin Erwig
IEEE Int. Symp. on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, 123-130, 2008
Best Paper Award

UCheck: A Spreadsheet Unit Checker for End Users, Robin Abraham and Martin Erwig
Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, Vol. 18, No. 1, 71-95, 2007

A Type System Based on End-User Vocabulary, Robin Abraham, Martin Erwig, and Scott Andrew
IEEE Int. Symp. on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, 215-222, 2007

Sharing Reasoning about Faults in Spreadsheets: An Empirical Study, Joey Lawrence, Robin Abraham, Margaret Burnett, and Martin Erwig
IEEE Int. Symp. on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, 35-42, 2006

Toward Sharing Reasoning to Improve Fault Localization in Spreadsheets, Joey Lawrence, Robin Abraham, Margaret Burnett, and Martin Erwig
2nd Workshop on End-User Software Engineering, 2006

Type Inference for Spreadsheets, Robin Abraham and Martin Erwig
ACM Int. Symp. on Principles and Practice of Declarative Programming, 73-84, 2006

How to Communicate Unit Error Messages in Spreadsheets, Robin Abraham and Martin Erwig
1st Workshop on End-User Software Engineering, 52-56, 2005

Header and Unit Inference for Spreadsheets Through Spatial Analyses, Robin Abraham and Martin Erwig
IEEE Int. Symp. on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, 165-172, 2004
Best Paper Award

Visually Customizing Inference Rules About Apples and Oranges, Margaret M. Burnett and Martin Erwig
2nd IEEE Int. Symp. on Human Centric Computing Languages and Environments, 140-148, 2002

Adding Apples and Oranges, Martin Erwig and Margaret M. Burnett
4th Int. Symp. on Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages, LNCS 2257, 173-191, 2002

Participating Researchers

Related Links

The EUSES Consortium

Mikel Glass, the artist who graciously allowed us to use one of his paintings for our logo.

Support