Design and Prototypical Implementation of a Web-based Spreadsheet System for Managing and Analyzing Semi-structured Data

Abstract

Today’s enterprises are heavily reliant on the use of spreadsheets (e.g., Microsoft Excel) in order to enable end-users to interactively analyze and visualize certain data sets on their own. The intuitive UI of spreadsheets enables that even non-IT-affine users are able to design complex spreadsheets. This spreadsheet virtue has led to the rise of spreadsheet use in many critical functions of organizations. It has also led to the increased risk of organizational department failure due to the error-proneness of spreadsheets. Numerous studies have been conducted to explore different approaches to solving this issue.

Based on the current research conducted in the field of error prevention for spreadsheets and solutions that already exist, this thesis sets out to develop its own approach to the prevention of errors in the form of a prototype, specifically with the ability of handling complex linked data. This is attempted by making use of an existing prototype of a data-table control, a functional domain-specific language (DSL) as well as a Hybrid Wiki REST API. It is in solving the issue of how complex linked data types are managed by spreadsheets that one not only introduces new approaches to collecting and displaying data in this field of research but also advances the field of spreadsheet error prevention.