Lambda the Ultimate

inactiveTopic XeLda: Enforcing Dimensional Consistency in Spreadsheets
started 5/4/2003; 4:57:12 AM - last post 5/4/2003; 9:51:45 AM
Ehud Lamm - XeLda: Enforcing Dimensional Consistency in Spreadsheets  blueArrow
5/4/2003; 4:57:12 AM (reads: 1401, responses: 1)
XeLda: Enforcing Dimensional Consistency in Spreadsheets
XeLda can detect at least three types of errors
  1. Computation Errors. These result from formulas whose inputs have inconsistent units. For example, a formula that added a dimensionless value to one with a unit would suffer this type of error, and XeLda would color its cell green.
  2. Propagation Errors. These result when one cell references another cell that was found to be in error. XeLda colors propagation error cells purple.
  3. Mismatch Errors. These are the sorts of errors described above that occur in those cells whose annotated formulas specify units that do not agree with what XeLda determines to be the correct units based on the inputs. These cells are blue.

This sounds cool, but I wasn't able to find more information (or a download). More information would be welcome.

It seems like there's a trend in programming language work these days to concentrate on Excel. I think this actually a good idea.

The obvious next step is to produce a framework for easy building of such tools. After that, someone should really work on supporting the implementation of this sort of tool in the spreadsheet itself. This shouldn't be to hard to do.


Posted to Software-Eng by Ehud Lamm on 5/4/03; 5:02:58 AM

Patrick Logan - Re: XeLda: Enforcing Dimensional Consistency in Spreadsheets  blueArrow
5/4/2003; 9:51:45 AM (reads: 573, responses: 0)
My permalink hasn't shown up yet, but this item sparks some thoughts about where software development is going. On my "blog" under Dynamic Model Checking for May 4.