SpreadsheetStructureDiscoverywithLogicProgramming.docVIP

Spreadsheet Structure Discovery with Logic Programming Jocelyn Ireson-Paine, / ABSTRACT Our term structure discovery denotes the recovery of structure, such as the grouping of cells, that was intended by a spreadsheet’s author but is not explicit in the spreadsheet. We are implementing structure-discovery tools in the logic-programming language Prolog for our spreadsheet analysis program Model Master, by writing grammars for spreadsheet structures. The objective is an intelligent structure monitor to run beside Excel, allowing users to reconfigure spreadsheets to the representational needs of the task at hand. This could revolutionise spreadsheet best practice. We also describe a formulation of spreadsheet reverse-engineering based on arrows. 1 INTRODUCTION In our first paper, presented at EuSpRIG 2001 [Ireson-Paine, 2001], we introduced the Model Master (MM) spreadsheet-description language, and showed how we could build spreadsheets by compiling them from MM programs, with advantages for readability, modularity, and code-reuse. In an MM version of Thomas Grossmans queuing simulation, where each column represented a server, we could change the number of servers simply by altering one constant. We also introduced decompilation - translating spreadsheets to MM programs – and its benefits for reverse-engineering and error-detection. An MM program is a summary of a spreadsheets calculations, useful in many ways. For example, Graham Macdonald has suggested that the commercial world would find it valuable in determining whether a spreadsheet accurately reflects a legal contract. Our second paper, available on the Web [Ireson-Paine, 2004], took decompilation further, making it rigorous via spreadsheet algebra (the phrase should be understood in the same way as, for example, vector algebra), which treats spreadsheets as mathematical entities. We implemented functions for operating on these, and an interface resembling those found in computer-algebra systems, which enabl