Spreadsheet Data Manipulation Using Examples.

Millions of computer end users need to perform tasks over large spreadsheet data, yet lack the programming knowledge to do such tasks automatically. We present a programming by example methodology that allows end users to automate such repetitive tasks. Our methodology involves designing a domain-sp...

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Publicado en:Communications of the ACM Vol. 55; no. 8; pp. 97 - 106
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Association for Computing Machinery Aug2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        atl: Spreadsheet Data Manipulation Using Examples.
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        Electronic spreadsheets
        Computer programming
        Microsoft Excel (Computer software)
        Domain-specific programming languages
        Information technology
        Electronic data processing
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          Electronic spreadsheets
          Computer programming
          Microsoft Excel (Computer software)
          Domain-specific programming languages
          Information technology
          Electronic data processing
      ab: Millions of computer end users need to perform tasks over large spreadsheet data, yet lack the programming knowledge to do such tasks automatically. We present a programming by example methodology that allows end users to automate such repetitive tasks. Our methodology involves designing a domain-specific language and developing a synthesis algorithm that can learn programs in that language from user-provided examples. We present instantiations of this methodology for particular domains of tasks: (a) syntactic transformations of strings using restricted forms of regular expressions, conditionals, and loops, (b) semantic transformations of strings involving lookup in relational tables, and (c) layout transformations on spreadsheet tables. We have implemented this technology as an add-in for the Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet system and have evaluated it successfully over several benchmarks picked from various Excel help forums.
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