A spreadsheet-based user interface for managing plural relationships in structured data

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2011.

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Bakke, Eirik
Other Authors: David R. Karger and Robert C. Miller.
Format: Thesis
Language:eng
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2011
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/63075
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author Bakke, Eirik
author2 David R. Karger and Robert C. Miller.
author_facet David R. Karger and Robert C. Miller.
Bakke, Eirik
author_sort Bakke, Eirik
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description Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2011.
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spelling mit-1721.1/630752019-04-10T18:00:30Z A spreadsheet-based user interface for managing plural relationships in structured data Bakke, Eirik David R. Karger and Robert C. Miller. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2011. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references (p. 57-58). A key feature of relational database applications is managing plural relationships-one-to-many and many-to-many-between entities, be they customers and invoices, parts and suppliers, or meetings and conference rooms. However, since it is often infeasible to adopt or develop a new database application for any given schema at hand, information workers instead turn to spreadsheets, a general and more familiar data management tool which, unfortunately, lends itself poorly to schemas requiring multiple related entity sets. In this thesis, we propose to reduce the cost-usability gap between spreadsheets and tailormade relational database applications by extending the spreadsheet paradigm to let the user establish relationships between rows in related worksheets as well as view and navigate the hierarchical cell structure that arises as a result. We present Related Worksheets, a spreadsheet-like prototype application, and evaluate it with a study involving 36 regular Excel users. First-time users of our software were able to solve most lookup-type query tasks without instruction, in one case 40% faster than on Excel. by Eirik Bakke. S.M. 2011-05-23T18:13:37Z 2011-05-23T18:13:37Z 2011 2011 Thesis http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/63075 725897442 eng M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 58 p. application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology
spellingShingle Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Bakke, Eirik
A spreadsheet-based user interface for managing plural relationships in structured data
title A spreadsheet-based user interface for managing plural relationships in structured data
title_full A spreadsheet-based user interface for managing plural relationships in structured data
title_fullStr A spreadsheet-based user interface for managing plural relationships in structured data
title_full_unstemmed A spreadsheet-based user interface for managing plural relationships in structured data
title_short A spreadsheet-based user interface for managing plural relationships in structured data
title_sort spreadsheet based user interface for managing plural relationships in structured data
topic Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/63075
work_keys_str_mv AT bakkeeirik aspreadsheetbaseduserinterfaceformanagingpluralrelationshipsinstructureddata
AT bakkeeirik spreadsheetbaseduserinterfaceformanagingpluralrelationshipsinstructureddata