Title: Enhancing Excel business tools with additional relational and recursive capabilities

Authors: Pedro Ramos; Luís Botelho; António Gonçalves Martins

Addresses: ISTAR-IUL, Institute of Telecommunications (IT-IUL), University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL), Av. das Forças Armadas, 1649-026, Lisboa, Portugal ' Institute of Telecommunications (IT-IUL), University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL), Lisboa, Portugal ' University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL), Lisboa, Portugal

Abstract: This paper presents a new plug-in that enriches spreadsheet capabilities mainly in what concerns it's potential regarding relational queries and recursive computational processes. Currently, some apparently trivial and useful queries can only be handled with the support of programming skills. Spreadsheet users with low computer science skills should have a natural and easy way to handle those queries within the spreadsheet, without relying on external programming (e.g., VBA). The tool we have developed can be used with Prolog technology and provides those features to the most used professional spreadsheet: Microsoft Excel. Throughout the paper, we explore the plug-in features with several business examples.

Keywords: business tools; Excel; Prolog; recursive processing; relational data; deductive spreadsheet; information technology.

DOI: 10.1504/IJITM.2021.119894

International Journal of Information Technology and Management, 2021 Vol.20 No.4, pp.356 - 376

Accepted: 28 Feb 2018
Published online: 23 Dec 2021 *

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