论文标题
增强的电子表格计算有限域约束满意度
Enhanced Spreadsheet Computing with Finite-Domain Constraint Satisfaction
论文作者
论文摘要
电子表格应用程序是现代社会中使用最广泛的计算工具之一。它提供了出色的可用性和实用性，并且可以轻松地使非编程器能够在视觉表格“笔和纸”方法中执行类似编程的任务。但是，由于其单向数据流，电子表格大部分仅限于簿记式应用。本文显示了如何扩展电子表格计算范例以打破此限制以解决约束满意度问题。我们提出了一个增强的电子表格系统，其中有限域约束解决方案在视觉环境中得到了很好的支持。此外，构建了电子表格特定的约束语言，供普通用户以声明性且可扩展的方式指定数据单元之间的约束。新的电子表格系统可以大大简化使用视觉表界面的许多基于约束的应用程序的开发。举例说明了扩展电子表格范式的可用性和实用性。 关键字：电子表格计算，有限域约束满意度，约束逻辑编程
The spreadsheet application is among the most widely used computing tools in modern society. It provides excellent usability and usefulness, and it easily enables a non-programmer to perform programming-like tasks in a visual tabular "pen and paper" approach. However, spreadsheets are mostly limited to bookkeeping-like applications due to their mono-directional data flow. This paper shows how the spreadsheet computing paradigm is extended to break this limitation for solving constraint satisfaction problems. We present an enhanced spreadsheet system where finite-domain constraint solving is well supported in a visual environment. Furthermore, a spreadsheet-specific constraint language is constructed for general users to specify constraints among data cells in a declarative and scalable way. The new spreadsheet system significantly simplifies the development of many constraint-based applications using a visual tabular interface. Examples are given to illustrate the usability and usefulness of the extended spreadsheet paradigm. KEYWORDS: Spreadsheet computing, Finite-domain constraint satisfaction, Constraint logic programming
