Jácome Cunha, João Saraiva, Joost Visser. Discovery-based edit assistance for spreadsheets. In IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, VL/HCC 2009, Corvallis, OR, USA, 20-24 September 2009, Proceedings. pages 233-237, IEEE, 2009. [doi]
In this paper, we demonstrate how implicit structural properties of spreadsheet data can be exploited to offer edit assistance to spreadsheet users. Our approach is based on the discovery of functional dependencies among data items which allow automatic reconstruction of a relational database schema. From this schema, new formulas and visual objects are embedded into the spreadsheet to offer features for auto-completion, guarded deletion, and controlled insertion. Schema discovery and spreadsheet enhancement are carried out automatically in the background and do not disturb normal user experience.