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Static Analysis for the VErification of Spreadsheets

Descripción del proyecto

Un nuevo conjunto de herramientas reduce la probabilidad de errores en las hojas de cálculo

Las aplicaciones de hojas de cálculo como Microsoft Excel son herramientas fundamentales para la investigación, la contabilidad y las empresas. Sin embargo, un simple error en las hojas de cálculo de una empresa puede representar un coste de miles de millones. Un proyecto anterior financiado con fondos europeos aplicó técnicas nuevas en el análisis estático de programas que facilita la comprobación de programas y utiliza estructuras de datos complejas, como series multidimensionales o unidimensionales, listas, árboles y diccionarios. MemCAD lideró el diseño de técnicas de abstracción potentes que permiten reflexionar sobre estructuras de datos complejas, como las tablas presentes en las hojas de cálculo. A partir de esos avances, el proyecto SPARKs, financiado con fondos europeos, tiene como objetivo aprovechar esos resultados en un conjunto de herramientas que puede comprobar, optimizar y mantener hojas de cálculo. El conjunto de herramientas previsto se basará en análisis estáticos, semánticos, conservadores y automáticos, que notificará todas las incidencias sobre determinadas clases de errores.

Objetivo

Spreadsheet applications (such as Microsoft Excel + VBA) are heavily used in a wide range of fields including engineering, finance, management, statistics and health. However, they do not ensure robustness properties, thus spreadsheet errors are hard to avoid, common and potentially very costly. According to estimates, the annual cost of spreadsheet errors is around 7 billion dollars. For instance, in 2013, a series of basic spreadsheet errors at JPMorgan incurred 6 billion dollars trading losses. To avoid such problems, spreadsheet users need better support from rigorous tools, since the development of industrial spreadsheets typically involves multiple tabs, formulas, macros and data read from external sources (e.g. the internet). However, as of today, spreadsheet environment offer almost no verification support, and third party tools do not allow to reason correctly over macros, and future uses of existing formulas. The MemCAD ERC StG project opened the way to novel formal analysis techniques for spreadsheet applications. Indeed, the MemCAD project led to the design of powerful abstraction techniques to reason over complex data-structures such as tables as found in spreadsheets. During this project, we have implemented AiXL, a prototype that was able to analyze large public benchmarks. It uncovered defects that are beyond the scope of other approaches. We propose to leverage these results into a toolbox able to safely verify, optimize and maintain spreadsheets, so as to reduce the likelihood of errors. The envisioned toolbox relies on automatic and conservative semantic static analysis, so that it will report all occurrences of certain classes of errors. It will have an open architecture with plugins, and will easily extend to user specific properties. This works will take place in a partnership with MatrixLEAD, a startup created based on the results of the ERC MemCAD project. MatrixLEAD will provide industrial use-cases and commercialization plans.

Régimen de financiación

ERC-POC - Proof of Concept Grant

Institución de acogida

INSTITUT NATIONAL DE RECHERCHE EN INFORMATIQUE ET AUTOMATIQUE
Aportación neta de la UEn
€ 149 533,00
Dirección
DOMAINE DE VOLUCEAU ROCQUENCOURT
78153 Le Chesnay Cedex
Francia

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Región
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Yvelines
Tipo de actividad
Research Organisations
Enlaces
Coste total
€ 149 533,00

Beneficiarios (1)