Spreadsheet Based Software Engineering

Abstract

Spreadsheets play a vital role in data processing and reporting procedures of any organization. That is why spreadsheet programming is the most successful end-user programming. Keeping in mind the similarity between spreadsheet programs and traditional programs the techniques that can be applied to traditional programs can also be applied in context of spreadsheets. The main objectives of this research are: (1) to classify spreadsheet research papers according to three criteria: techniques used, datasets used, publication channels and trends; and (2) to analyze these studies from four perspectives: study objectives, methods, method accuracy and limitations of the study. We perform a systematic mapping study on spreadsheet studies published in the period 2013-2018, collected from automated four electronic databases. We identified a total of 44 studies published between 2013 and 2018 and classified them on predefined classification criteria. Based on the findings of this research, it is concluded that Smell Detection is the technique that is applied in most of the cases on spreadsheets. The year 2016 receives the highest number of publications on spreadsheets. The most used dataset is from the corporation called EUSES.