3D structured spreadsheet
Date
1994
Authors
Wu, Qian
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Abstract
The 3D Structured Spreadsheet (3DSS) is a new kind of spreadsheet that uses program organization concepts similar to those of block-structured languages.
A program developed in a block-structured language such as PASCAL contains a main unit and optionally many functions and procedures. The major unit such as blocks, procedures and functions can be recursively defined. References to variable names follow scoping rules. In the same way, a 3DSS program can contain many sheets: one main sheet, and optionally many subsheets. A cell in a sheet can contain different kinds of values: text, number, formula, or a subsheet or a group of timesheets that vary with "time". Every cell can be given a name, and the reference relationships among the cells of parent sheets and subsheets follow the block structured scoping mechanism. Sheets in a 3D Structured Spreadsheet program are therefore organized into a tree structure. Any sheet can also vary in "time" (3D) using time formulas to construct a group of time frames-- timesheets. 3D Structured Spreadsheet combines subsheet and timesheet together, and can organize information into a complex dynamic hierarchical way. In addition, one can define functions and procedures using subsheets and timesheets through programming-by-example in the same spreadsheet programming paradigm.
The new spreadsheet design is based on ideas used by conventional spreadsheets, but it has significant advantages over the conventional ones. The hierarchical organization mechanism allows top-down design. The 3D feature provides a more powerful and convenient method for organizing information that varies in "time", and a more powerful calculation ability for iterative calculations. User-defined functions or procedures through programming-by-example in the same spreadsheet programming paradigm extends the spreadsheet programming environment and provides an abstract way to organize blocks of information having similar structure.