Spreadsheet Implementation Technology ― Basics and Extensions

Spreadsheets are used daily by millions of people for tasks that range fromorganizing a list of addresses to carrying out complex economic simulations. Spreadsheet programsare easy to learn and convenient to use because they have a clear visual model and a simpleefficient underlying computational model. Yet although the basic spreadsheet model could beextended, improved, or otherwise experimented with in many ways, there is no coherently designed,reasonably efficient open source spreadsheet implementation that is a suitable platform for suchexperiments. This book fills the gap, teaching users how to experiment with and implement innovativespreadsheet functionality and introducing two software platforms for doing so. Along the way, itdraws on and illustrates software technologies and computer science topics that range fromobject-oriented programming to compiler technology.

SpreadsheetImplementation Technology surveys a wide range of information about spreadsheets drawnfrom user experience, the scientific literature, and patents. After summarizing the spreadsheetcomputation model and the most important challenges for efficient recalculation, the book describesCorecalc, a core implementation of essential spreadsheet functionality suitable for practicalexperiments, and Funcalc, an extension of Corecalc that allows users to define their own functionswithout extraneous programming languages or loss of efficiency. It also shows the advantages ofautomatic function specialization and offers a user's manual for Funcalc. The Corecalc and Funcalcsoftware is downloadable free of charge.

Peter Sestoft is a Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including Java Precisely and C# Precisely, both published by the MIT Press.