Spreadsheet integration: a Pay-As-You-Go approach

• Grant number: 14/21963-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: January 01, 2015
• End date: December 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Computer Science - Computer Systems
• Principal Investigator: André Santanchè
• Grantee: Ivelize Rocha Bernardo
• Supervisor: Alvaro A. A. Fernandes
• Host Institution: Instituto de Computação (IC). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Manchester, England
• Associated to the scholarship: 12/16159-6 - Promoting Interoperability of Spreadsheets by Recognizing of Signs, BP.DR

Abstract

Spreadsheets are popular among users and organizations, and have become an essential data management tool. Their ease of access associated with the freedom to create one resulted in a large amount of data available in this format. However, spreadsheets are not conceived to be interoperable and challenges arise involving the systematization of processes to reuse and combine their data. Many related initiatives are addressing data interoperability focusing on lexical and syntactical aspects. However, the exploration of the impact of semantic aspects is still an open challenge. Most of the related work is limited to semantic recognition of isolated attributes, without considering important contextual aspects, such as: the spatial arrangement of cells, rows and columns, how they are related by the special structure to the domain form which they arise. Our proposal is novel in considering it beneficial to identify shared community practices in the form of construction patterns that can be analysed and exploited in spreadsheet recognition to enhance semantic interoperability. At present, our research is focused on defining an infrastructure to handle the data extracted from spreadsheets in a pay-as-you-go integration approach. (AU)