Print Email Facebook Twitter Detecting and refactoring code smells in spreadsheet formula Title Detecting and refactoring code smells in spreadsheet formula Author Hermans, F.F.J. Pinzger, M. Van Deursen, A. Faculty Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science Department Software Computer Technology Date 2013-12-31 Abstract Preprint of article published in: Empirical Software Engineering, February 2014, Springer Science+Business Media New York, doi:10.1007/s10664-013-9296-2 Spreadsheets are used extensively in business processes around the world and just like software, spreadsheets are changed throughout their lifetime causing understandability and maintainability issues. This paper adapts known code smells to spreadsheet formulas. To that end we present a list of metrics by which we can detect smelly formulas; a visualization technique to highlight these formulas in spreadsheets and a method to automatically suggest refactorings to resolve smells. We implemented the metrics, visualization and refactoring suggestions techniques in a prototype tool and evaluated our approach in three studies. Firstly, we analyze the EUSES spreadsheet corpus, to study the occurrence of the formula smells. Secondly, we analyze ten real life spreadsheets, and interview the spreadsheet owners about the identified smells. Finally, we generate refactoring suggestions for those ten spreadsheets and study the implications. The results of these evaluations indicate that formula smells are common, that they can reveal real errors and weaknesses in spreadsheet formulas and that in simple cases they can be refactored. Subject spreadsheetscode smellsrefactoring To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:0677c4b7-6925-411a-848b-7995d61b6dd1 Publisher Delft University of Technology, Software Engineering Research Group Embargo date 2015-02-07 ISSN 1872-5392 Source Technical Report Series TUD-SERG-2013-022 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type report Rights (c) 2013, by the authors of this report. Software Engineering Research Group, Department ofSoftware Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, Delft University of Technology. All rights reserved. No part of this series may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the authors. Files PDF TUD-SERG-2013-022.pdf 438.13 KB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:0677c4b7-6925-411a-848b-7995d61b6dd1/datastream/OBJ/view