Integrating multi-way data-flow constraint systems in spreadsheets

Abstract

Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) can be found in almost all aspects of our lives. We take a particular interest in spreadsheets in thesis, as they are an essential tool in many professions. Microsoft Excel is a prevalent spreadsheet software widely used across industries; it is frequently used to fill out various forms. However, maintaining dependencies between variables can be difficult to ensure and prone to bugs, especially as the size of the project increases. Our approach is to introduce some structure to Excel, and we have thus created a tool, HDTables, to address the problem of maintaining dependencies between variables. HDTables is an Excel add-in created using HotDrink, a JavaScript library that uses multi-way data-flow constraint systems to model GUIs, in combination with the visual programming environment Blockly. The tool is aimed at end-users with no programming background and allows them to create variables and constraints to explicitly define the data-flow between cells in Excel.