Detecting Code Smells in Spreadsheet Formulas

Report (2011)
Department
Software Technology (EEMCS) (TU Delft)
Copyright: © 2011 The authors. Software Engineering Research Group, Department of Software Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, Delft University of Technology.
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Published Date

31-12-2011

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Source:

Technical Report Series TUD-SERG-2011-030

Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Department

Software Technology

Abstract

Spreadsheets are used extensively in business processes around the world and just like software, spreadsheets are changed throughout their lifetime causing maintainability issues. This paper adapts known code smells to spreadsheet formulas. To that end we present a list of metrics by which we can detect smelly formulas and a visualization technique to highlight these formulas in spreadsheets. We implemented the metrics and visualization technique in a prototype tool to evaluate our approach in two ways. Firstly, we analyze the Euses spreadsheet corpus, to study the occurrence of the formula smells. Secondly, we analyze ten real life spreadsheets, and interview the spreadsheet owners about the identified smells. The results of these evaluations indicate that formula smells are common and that they can reveal real errors and weaknesses in spreadsheet formulas.