Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: Spreadsheets are among the most commonly used applications for data management and analysis. They combine data processing with very diverse supplementary features: statistics, visualization, reporting, linear programming solvers, Web queries periodically downloading data from external sources, etc. However, the spreadsheet paradigm of computation still lacks sufficient analysis. In this article, we demonstrate that a spreadsheet can implement all data transformations definable in SQL, merely by utilizing spreadsheet formulas. We provide a query compiler, which translates any given SQL query into a worksheet of the same semantics, including NULL values. Thereby, database operations become available to the users who do not want to migrate to a database. They can define their queries using a high-level language and then get their execution plans in a plain vanilla spreadsheet. The functions available in spreadsheets impose limitations on the algorithms one can implement. In this paper, we offer O(n log2n) sorting spreadsheet, using a non-constant number of rows, and, surprisingly, Depth-First-Search and Breadth-First-Search on graphs.
Authors: Jacek Sroka, Adrian Panasiuk, Krzysztof Stencel, Jerzy Tyszkiewicz
Institution: University of Warsaw
Language: English
Subfield: Computer Networks and Communications
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Narodowe Centrum Nauki
OpenAlex ID: W2054185116