Modeling Spreadsheet Audit: A Rigorous Approach to Automatic Visnalization

摘要

Computations in spreadsheets are hard to grasp and consequently many errors remain unnoticed. The problem with the hidden errors lies in the invisibility of the structure of calculations. As a result, auditing and visualization tools are required to make spread- sheets easier to comprehend and to make errors easier to detect. This paper presents a theoretical model of spreadsheets and a technique to describe spreadsheet auditing tools. These are then employed to describe and compare various tools. Moreover, two new visualization mechanisms are introduced.