11,387 research outputs found

    Towards Evaluating the Quality of a Spreadsheet: The Case of the Analytical Spreadsheet Model

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    We consider the challenge of creating guidelines to evaluate the quality of a spreadsheet model. We suggest four principles. First, state the domain-the spreadsheets to which the guidelines apply. Second, distinguish between the process by which a spreadsheet is constructed from the resulting spreadsheet artifact. Third, guidelines should be written in terms of the artifact, independent of the process. Fourth, the meaning of "quality" must be defined. We illustrate these principles with an example. We define the domain of "analytical spreadsheet models", which are used in business, finance, engineering, and science. We propose for discussion a framework and terminology for evaluating the quality of analytical spreadsheet models. This framework categorizes and generalizes the findings of previous work on the more narrow domain of financial spreadsheet models. We suggest that the ultimate goal is a set of guidelines for an evaluator, and a checklist for a developer.Comment: Proc. European Spreadsheet Risks Int. Grp. (EuSpRIG) 2011 ISBN 978-0-9566256-9-

    DataSpread: Unifying Databases and Spreadsheets.

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    Spreadsheet software is often the tool of choice for ad-hoc tabular data management, processing, and visualization, especially on tiny data sets. On the other hand, relational database systems offer significant power, expressivity, and efficiency over spreadsheet software for data management, while lacking in the ease of use and ad-hoc analysis capabilities. We demonstrate DataSpread, a data exploration tool that holistically unifies databases and spreadsheets. It continues to offer a Microsoft Excel-based spreadsheet front-end, while in parallel managing all the data in a back-end database, specifically, PostgreSQL. DataSpread retains all the advantages of spreadsheets, including ease of use, ad-hoc analysis and visualization capabilities, and a schema-free nature, while also adding the advantages of traditional relational databases, such as scalability and the ability to use arbitrary SQL to import, filter, or join external or internal tables and have the results appear in the spreadsheet. DataSpread needs to reason about and reconcile differences in the notions of schema, addressing of cells and tuples, and the current pane (which exists in spreadsheets but not in traditional databases), and support data modifications at both the front-end and the back-end. Our demonstration will center on our first and early prototype of the DataSpread, and will give the attendees a sense for the enormous data exploration capabilities offered by unifying spreadsheets and databases

    EXTMOV: A Computer Spreadsheet Program For Analyzing Staffing Costs and Benefits

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    [Excerpt] EXTMOV is a LOTUS 1-2-3 spreadsheet program specially designed to assist those managing their human resources. The program allows you to construct a simulation of your workforce that can depict the dollar-valued implications of various selection, recruitment and turnover management strategies. The relationships in the computer program are based on the external employee movement utility model described in Boudreau and Berger\u27s Monograph, Decision- Theoretic Utility Analysis Applied to Employee Separations and Acquisitions (Boudreau & Berger, 1985). A case study illustrating how this program can be used to suppon managerial decisions about investments in recruitment, selection and turnover management is contained in another Center working paper #91-12 (Boudreau, 1991)

    Just below the surface: developing knowledge management systems using the paradigm of the noetic prism

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    In this paper we examine how the principles embodied in the paradigm of the noetic prism can illuminate the construction of knowledge management systems. We draw on the formalism of the prism to examine three successful tools: frames, spreadsheets and databases, and show how their power and also their shortcomings arise from their domain representation, and how any organisational system based on integration of these tools and conversion between them is inevitably lossy. We suggest how a late-binding, hybrid knowledge based management system (KBMS) could be designed that draws on the lessons learnt from these tools, by maintaining noetica at an atomic level and storing the combinatory processes necessary to create higher level structure as the need arises. We outline the “just-below-the-surface” systems design, and describe its implementation in an enterprise-wide knowledge-based system that has all of the conventional office automation features

    An Excel Add-In for Statistical Process Control Charts

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    Statistical process control (SPC) descibes a widely-used set of approaches used to detect shifts in processes in, for example, manufacturing. Among these are "control charts". Control charts and other SPC techniques have been in use since at least the'50s, and, because they are comparatively unsophisticated, are often used by management or operations personnel without formal statistical training. These personnel will often have experience with the popular spreadsheet program Excel, but may have less training on a mainstream statistical package. Base Excel does not provide the ability to draw control charts directly, although add-ins for that purpose are available for purchase. We present a free add-in for Excel that draws the most common sorts of control charts. It follows the development of the textbook of Montgomery (2005), so it may be well-suited for instructional purposes.
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