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Spreadsheets based on interval constraint satisfaction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2009

Eero Hyvönen
Eero Hyvönen
Affiliation:
Technical Research Centre of Finland, Laboratory for Information Processing, Lehtisaarentie 2A, 00340 Helsinki, Finland.
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Abstract

Spreadsheets are difficult to use in applications, where only incomplete or inexact data (e.g., intervals) are available-a typical situation in various design and planning tasks. It can be argued that this is due to two fundamental shortcomings of the computational paradigm underlying spreadsheets. First, the distinction between input and output cells has to be fixed before computations. Second, cells may have only exact values. As a result, spread-sheets support the user only with primitive iterative problem solving schemes based on trial-and-error methods. A constraint-based computational paradigm for next generation interval spreadsheets is presented. The scheme makes it possible to exploit incomplete/inexact data (intervals), and it can support problem solving in a top-down fashion. Current spreadsheets constitute a special case of the more general interval constraint spreadsheets proposed.

Keywords

spreadsheetsinterval constraint satisfactiontop-down refinement
Type
Research Article
Information
AI EDAM , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Winter 1994 , pp. 27 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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