Inferring templates from spreadsheets

Abstract

We present a study investigating the performance of a system for automatically inferring spreadsheet templates. These templates allow users to safely edit spreadsheets, that is, certain kinds of errors such as range, reference, and type errors can be provably prevented. Since the inference of templates is inherently ambiguous, such a study is required to demonstrate the effectiveness of any such automatic system. The study results show that the system considered performs significantly better than subjects with intermediate to expert level programming expertise. These results are important because the translation of the huge body of existing spreadsheets into a system based on safety-guaranteeing templates cannot be performed without automatic support. We also carried out post-hoc analyses of the video recordings of the subjects' interactions with the spreadsheets and found that although expert-level subjects needed less time and developed more accurate templates than less experienced subjects, they did not inspect fewer cells in the spreadsheet. %and found that expert-level subjects spend less time and inspect fewer cells in the spreadsheet and develop more accurate templates than subjects with less experience.