TabbyXL: Software platform for rule-based spreadsheet data extraction and transformation

Spreadsheets are widely used in science, engineering, business, and other activities. Overall, they conceal a large volume of data in a form intended to be interpreted by humans. We present a novel software platform facilitated for liberating such data. It provides rule-based spreadsheet data extrac...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:SoftwareX Vol. 10; p. 100270
Main Authors: Shigarov, A., Khristyuk, V., Mikhailov, A.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier B.V 01.07.2019
Elsevier
Subjects:
Information extraction
Rule-based programming
Software development
Spreadsheet data
Table understanding
Unstructured data management
Spreadsheet data
Rule-based programming
Information extraction
Unstructured data management
Table understanding
Software development
ISSN:2352-7110, 2352-7110
Online Access:Get full text
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Description
Summary:Spreadsheets are widely used in science, engineering, business, and other activities. Overall, they conceal a large volume of data in a form intended to be interpreted by humans. We present a novel software platform facilitated for liberating such data. It provides rule-based spreadsheet data extraction and transformation to a structured form. Its core consists of a flexible table object model and a domain-specific rule language for table analysis. They serve to represent knowledge of table layout and content features, as well as their interpretation depending on transformation goals. This enables processing arbitrary tables originating from various domains. Our empirical results demonstrate that one ruleset can be applied to process arbitrary tables having the same features of layout, style, or content. The paper also describes two applications using the software platform to develop programs for rule-based converting data from arbitrary spreadsheet tables.
ISSN:2352-7110
2352-7110
DOI:10.1016/j.softx.2019.100270