Abstract
Spreadsheets can be considered to be the world's most successful end-user programming language. In fact, one could say spreadsheets are programs. This paper starts with a comparison of spreadsheets to software: spreadsheets are similar in terms of applications domains, expressive power and maintainability problems. We then reflect upon what makes spreadsheets successful: liveness, directness and an easy deployment environment seem contribute largely to their success. Being a programming language, several techniques from software engineering can be applied to spreadsheets. We present an overview of such research directions, including spreadsheet testing, reverse engineering, smell detection, clone detection and refactoring. Finally, open challenges and future plans for the domain of spreadsheet software engineering are presented.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | 2016 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution, and Reengineering, SANER 2016 |
Editors | A. Jiu |
Place of Publication | Piscataway, NJ |
Publisher | IEEE |
ISBN (Electronic) | 978-1-5090-1855-0 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Mar 2016 |
Event | SANER 2016: 23rd IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution, and Reengineering - Osaka, Japan Duration: 14 Mar 2016 → 18 Mar 2016 |
Conference
Conference | SANER 2016 |
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Country/Territory | Japan |
City | Osaka |
Period | 14/03/16 → 18/03/16 |
Keywords
- Software
- Programming profession
- Testing
- Documentation
- Software engineering
- Companies