Faster, Higher, Stronger: Redesigning Spreadsheets for Scale

Mangesh Bendre, Tana Wattanawaroon, Sajjadur Rahman, Kelly Mack, Yuyang Liu, Shichu Zhu, Yu Lu, Ping-Jing Yang, Xinyan Zhou, Kevin Chen-Chuan Chang, Karrie Karahalios, Aditya G. Parameswaran

Abstract: Spreadsheet tools are ubiquitous for interactive adhoc data management and analysis. With increasing dataset sizes, spreadsheet tools fall short-they freeze during heavy computation within the sheet (interactivity); they are hard to navigate when datasets go beyond a certain size (navigability); they only support cell-at-a-time computation, severely limiting analysis capabilities (expressiveness). We have been developing DATASPREAD to holistically unify databases and spreadsheets to leverage the benefits of both, with a spreadsheet-like front-end and a database-like backend. We demonstrate three key features of DATASPREAD to address the aforementioned spreadsheet scalability challenges in interactivity, navigability, and expressiveness1. Our demonstration will let attendees perform typical analysis tasks on Microsoft Excel and DATASPREAD side-by-side, providing a clear understanding of the improvements offered by DATASPREAD over traditional spreadsheet tools.