Jácome Cunha,João P.Fernandes,Christophe Peixoto,
João Saraiva
1 HASLab / INESC TEC & Universidade do Minho, Portugal
QUATIC 2012
A Quality Model for SpreadsheetA Quality Model for Spreadsheet
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Why do Spreadsheets matter?Why do Spreadsheets matter?
95% of all U.S. firms
90% of all analysts in industry
50% of all SSs are the basis for decisions
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Still...Still...
Economy losses of $10 billion/year!
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A recent spreadsheet error...A recent spreadsheet error...
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A Portuguese horror story...A Portuguese horror story...
• EuSpriG Original Horror Stories
• http://www.eusprig.org/stories.htm
Many more horror stories... Many more horror stories...
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SpreadSheets as SW Languages SpreadSheets as SW Languages
In fact Spreadsheets lack advanced mechanisms found in modern languages, namely:
Type and Modular Systems
Abstractions
Debuggers/Profilers/Refactors
Mechanisms for Model-Driven Engineering and Software Evolution!
Best Practice Rules...
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This paper This paper
We propose a quality model for spreadsheets based on the widely accepted ISO/IEC 9126 standard for software product quality.
We introduce a set of domain specific metrics for spreadsheets used to measure concrete spreadsheet characteristics.
We calibrate our quality model using a large repository of real-world spreadsheets (EUSES corpus)
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Spreadsheets Quality Model: Definition Spreadsheets Quality Model: Definition
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SpreadSheet Quality Model: DefinitionSpreadSheet Quality Model: Definition
We have adapted the ISO/IEC 9126 to Spreadsheets
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SpreadSheet Quality Model: DefinitionSpreadSheet Quality Model: Definition
For example:
Understandability: There are many ways to make a spreadsheet more understandable
1- the separation of the input, computation and output components of the spreadsheet.2- the use of different background colors for different types of data cells.3- a large number of cells makes a spreadsheet hard to understand.
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SpreadSheet Quality Model: Calibration SpreadSheet Quality Model: Calibration
To calibrate our model we need to consider a large repository of spreadsheets: The EUSES corpus (5606 spreadsheets, organized in 6 categories)
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SpreadSheet Quality Model: Calibration SpreadSheet Quality Model: Calibration
The Metrics: we reused SIG Spreadsheets metrics suite
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SpreadSheet Quality Model: Calibration SpreadSheet Quality Model: Calibration
The idea is to compute the metrics in a large set of real-word spreadsheet in order to define metric values that allow us to assign a five star ranking to a spreadsheet.
Repository: EUSES
Metric: Number of Cells
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SpreadSheet Quality Model: Calibration SpreadSheet Quality Model: Calibration
The graphics that represent the aggregation based on the central tendency of the results of computing the metric “number of cells”
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SpreadSheet Quality Model: Calibration SpreadSheet Quality Model: Calibration
Finally, we are able to define the star ranking intervals for each of the characteristics considered:
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SpreadSheet Smells: Catalog Validation SpreadSheet Smells: Catalog Validation
We have implemented both a batch and web-based spreadsheet quality analyzer tools:
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SpreadSheet Quality Model: Evaluation SpreadSheet Quality Model: Evaluation
We have developed an equivalent android-based application to assess quality of cloud stored spreadsheets (google docs).
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● We presented a quality model for spreadsheets.● We have implemented the quality model as three
different tools.● We have calibrated our model using the tools a
large repository containing real-world spreadsheets.● But,
this is a preliminary result/model. We need to extend our metric suite and, thus, to consider more sub-
characteristics of the ISO 9126 std.
Conclusions Conclusions
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● SSaaPP – SpreadSheets as a Programmin Paradigm (FCT funded)
http://ssaapp.di.uminho.pt● AutoSeer - Automated Test Oracles for Software
Error Detection (FCT funded)
http://www.fe.up.pt/AutoSeer
Research Material Research Material
