A Formal Framework for Spreadsheet System

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A Formal Framework for Spreadsheet System

The paper puts forward a formal framework for representing, manipulating a wide riety of models,and organizing the detailed data. The framework uses a hierarchically aryclic graph combined with hierarchical spreadsheets to represent the semantic as well as the physical structure of a model. The hierarchically acyclic graph naturally incorporates the idea of hierarchical decomposition or bottom-up composition. The hierachical spreadsheets are an excellent representation forthe hierarchically acyclic graph, and provide the conceptual framework for spreadsheet systems of surprisingly general applicability. In this case, a model can be uniquely decomposed into seveal basic models, and a basic models, and a basic model may be represented by a hierarchical spreadsheet which closely connects with the relational theory so that model integration is a direct corollary of the relation join. Moverover, the framework standardizes model definition and model integration,is very natural way of thinking and reasoning for modeling, and demonstrates the simplicity and understandability.