Using constraints to diagnose faulty spreadsheets

• Tipo: Artigo em Revista Científica Internacional
• Data: 2015

Autores

Rui Abreu (Autor) FEUP; Birgit Hofer (Autor) Outra; Alexandre Perez (Autor) Outra; Franz Wotawa (Autor) Outra

Revista

Título: Software Quality Journal

Vol. 23

Páginas: 297-322

ISSN: 0963-9314

Editora: Springer Nature

Indexação

ISI Web of Knowledge - 15 Citações

Scopus - 17 Citações

Classificação Científica

FOS: Ciências exactas e naturais > Ciências da computação e da informação

Outras Informações

ID Authenticus: P-00A-99D

DOI: 10.1007/s11219-014-9236-4

Abstract (EN): Spreadsheets can be viewed as a highly flexible programming environment for end users. Spreadsheets are widely adopted for decision making and may have a serious economical impact for the business. However, spreadsheets are staggeringly prone to errors. Hence, approaches for aiding the process of pinpointing the faulty cells in a spreadsheet are of great value. We present a constraint-based approach, ConBug, for debugging spreadsheets. The approach takes as input a (faulty) spreadsheet and a test case that reveals the fault and computes a set of diagnosis candidates for the debugging problem. Therefore, we convert the spreadsheet and a test case to a constraint satisfaction problem. We perform an empirical evaluation with 78 spreadsheets from different sources, where we demonstrate that our approach is light-weight and efficient. From our experimental results, we conclude that ConBug helps end users to pinpoint faulty cells.

Idioma: Inglês

Tipo (Avaliação Docente): Científica

Nº de páginas: 26