research-article

Free access

Spreadsheet data manipulation using examples

Authors:

William R. Harris,

Rishabh SinghAuthors Info & Claims

Communications of the ACM, Volume 55, Issue 8

Pages 97 - 105

https://doi.org/10.1145/2240236.2240260

Published: 01 August 2012 Publication History

All formats PDF

Abstract

Millions of computer end users need to perform tasks over large spreadsheet data, yet lack the programming knowledge to do such tasks automatically. We present a programming by example methodology that allows end users to automate such repetitive tasks. Our methodology involves designing a domain-specific language and developing a synthesis algorithm that can learn programs in that language from user-provided examples. We present instantiations of this methodology for particular domains of tasks: (a) syntactic transformations of strings using restricted forms of regular expressions, conditionals, and loops, (b) semantic transformations of strings involving lookup in relational tables, and (c) layout transformations on spreadsheet tables. We have implemented this technology as an add-in for the Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet system and have evaluated it successfully over several benchmarks picked from various Excel help forums.

References

[1]

Cypher, A., ed. Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration, MIT Press, 1993.

Digital Library

[2]

Das Sarma, A., Parameswaran, A., Garcia-Molina, H., Widom, J. Synthesizing view definitions from data. In ICDT (2010).

Digital Library

[3]

Fisher, K., Walker, D. The PADS project: an overview. In ICDT (2011).

Digital Library

[4]

Gualtieri, M. Deputize end-user developers to deliver business agility and reduce costs. In Forrester Report for Application Development and Program Management Professionals (Apr. 2009).

[5]

Gulwani, S. Dimensions in program synthesis. In PPDP (2010).

Digital Library

[6]

Gulwani, S. Automating string processing in spreadsheets using input-output examples. In POPL (2011).

Digital Library

[7]

Gulwani, S., Jha, S., Tiwari, A., Venkatesan, R. Synthesis of loop-free programs. In PLDI (2011).

Digital Library

[8]

Harris, W.R., Gulwani, S. Spreadsheet table transformations from examples. In PLDI (2011).

Digital Library

[9]

Itzhaky, S., Gulwani, S., Immerman, N., Sagiv, M. A simple inductive synthesis methodology and its applications. In OOPSLA (2010).

Digital Library

[10]

Jha, S., Gulwani, S., Seshia, S., Tiwari, A. Oracle-guided component-based program synthesis. In ICSE (2010).

Digital Library

[11]

Kandel, S., Paepcke, A., Hellerstein, J., Heer, J. Wrangler: Interactive visual specification of data transformation scripts. In CHI (2011).

Digital Library

[12]

Ko, A.J., Myers, B.A., Aung, H.H. Six learning barriers in end-user programming systems. In VL/HCC (2004).

Digital Library

[13]

Lau, T. Why P B D systems fail: lessons learned for usable AI. In CHI 2008 Workshop on Usable AI (2008).

[14]

Lau, T., Wolfman, S., Domingos, P., Weld, D. Programming by demonstration using version space algebra. Mach. Learn. 53(1--2) (2003).

Digital Library

[15]

Lieberman, H. Your Wish is My Command: Programming by Example, Morgan Kaufmann, 2001.

Digital Library

[16]

Miller, R.C., Myers, B.A., Interactive simultaneous editing of multiple text regions. In USENIX Annual Technical Conference (2001).

Digital Library

[17]

Mitchell, T.M. Generalization as search. Artif. Intell. 18, 2 (1982).

[18]

Singh, R., Gulwani, S. Learning semantic string transformations from examples. PVLDB 5 (2012), in press.

Digital Library

[19]

Srivastava, S., Gulwani, S., Chaudhuri, S., Foster, J.S. Path-based inductive synthesis for program inversion. In PLDI (2011).

Digital Library

[20]

Srivastava, S., Gulwani, S., Foster, J. From program verification to program synthesis. In POPL (2010).

Digital Library

[21]

Taly, A., Gulwani, S., Tiwari, A. Synthesizing switching logic using constraint solving. In VMCAI (2009).

Digital Library

[22]

Tran, Q.T., Chan, C.Y., Parthasarathy, S. Query by output. In SIGMOD (2009).

Digital Library

[23]

Walkenbach, J. Excel 2010 Formulas, John Wiley and Sons, 2010.

Digital Library

Cited By

Xia JLiu JBrown NChen YFeng YFilkov VRay BZhou M(2024)Refinement Types for VisualizationProceedings of the 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3691620.3695550(1871-1881)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3691620.3695550
Huang JGuo DWang CGu JLu SInala JYan CGao JDuan NLyu MFilkov VRay BZhou M(2024)Contextualized Data-Wrangling Code Generation in Computational NotebooksProceedings of the 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3691620.3695503(1282-1294)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3691620.3695503
Li PHe YYan CWang YChaudhuri S(2024)Auto-Tables: Relationalize Tables without Using ExamplesACM SIGMOD Record10.1145/3665252.366526953:1(76-85)Online publication date: 14-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3665252.3665269
Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Spreadsheet table transformations from examples
PLDI '11

Every day, millions of computer end-users need to perform tasks over large, tabular data, yet lack the programming knowledge to do such tasks automatically. In this work, we present an automatic technique that takes from a user an example of how the ...
Spreadsheet table transformations from examples
PLDI '11: Proceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

Every day, millions of computer end-users need to perform tasks over large, tabular data, yet lack the programming knowledge to do such tasks automatically. In this work, we present an automatic technique that takes from a user an example of how the ...
Spreadsheet: Worksheet, Microsoft Excel, List of spreadsheet software, Online spreadsheet, Comparison of spreadsheet software, Cut, copy, and paste, Model Audit, Formula, VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image Communications of the ACM

Communications of the ACM Volume 55, Issue 8

August 2012

105 pages

ISSN:0001-0782

EISSN:1557-7317

DOI:10.1145/2240236

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 August 2012

Published in CACM Volume 55, Issue 8

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Qualifiers

Research-article
Popular
Refereed

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

231
Total Citations
View Citations
6,985
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)499
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)104

Reflects downloads up to 17 Oct 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Xia JLiu JBrown NChen YFeng YFilkov VRay BZhou M(2024)Refinement Types for VisualizationProceedings of the 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3691620.3695550(1871-1881)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3691620.3695550
Huang JGuo DWang CGu JLu SInala JYan CGao JDuan NLyu MFilkov VRay BZhou M(2024)Contextualized Data-Wrangling Code Generation in Computational NotebooksProceedings of the 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3691620.3695503(1282-1294)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3691620.3695503
Li PHe YYan CWang YChaudhuri S(2024)Auto-Tables: Relationalize Tables without Using ExamplesACM SIGMOD Record10.1145/3665252.366526953:1(76-85)Online publication date: 14-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3665252.3665269
Dargahi Nobari ARafiei D(2024)DTT: An Example-Driven Tabular Transformer for Joinability by Leveraging Large Language ModelsProceedings of the ACM on Management of Data10.1145/36392792:1(1-24)Online publication date: 26-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3639279
Deng HTao RPeng YWu X(2024)A Case for Synthesis of Recursive Quantum Unitary ProgramsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36329018:POPL(1759-1788)Online publication date: 5-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3632901
Godbole ACheang KManerkar YSeshia STsafrir DMusuvathi MGupta RAbu-Ghazaleh N(2024)Lifting Micro-Update Models from RTL for Formal Security AnalysisProceedings of the 29th ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, Volume 210.1145/3620665.3640418(631-648)Online publication date: 27-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3620665.3640418
Sharma TKechagia MGeorgiou STiwari RVats IMoazen HSarro F(2024)A survey on machine learning techniques applied to source codeJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2023.111934209:COnline publication date: 14-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jss.2023.111934
Pan YLyu CYang ZLi LLiu QShao X(2024)E-code: Mastering efficient code generation through pretrained models and expert encoder groupInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107602(107602)Online publication date: Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107602
Zhang HZhang KLi ZLi JLi JLi YZhao YZhu YLiu FLi GJin Z(2024)Deep learning for code generation: a surveyScience China Information Sciences10.1007/s11432-023-3956-367:9Online publication date: 20-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-023-3956-3
Omidvartehrani SNobari ARafiei D(2024)GXJoin: Generalized Cell Transformations for�Explainable JoinabilityAdvances in Databases and Information Systems10.1007/978-3-031-70626-4_9(123-137)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-70626-4_9
Show More Cited By

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Digital Edition

View this article in digital edition.

Digital Edition

Magazine Site

View this article on the magazine site (external)

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Article

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents