Modelling and Decision Support using Web Technologies

Shim et al (2002) explain the importance of the web for all types of decision support activity "At the beginning of the 21st century, the Web is the center of activity in developing DSS." Shim et al explain how decision support systems can be provided at low cost and for geographically dispersed companies, customers and suppliers. They cite Power (2006b) when stating "Web-based DSS have reduced technological barriers and made it easier and less costly to make decision-relevant information and model-driven DSS available to managers and staff users in geographically distributed locations." This was the reasoning behind the DATUM (Design Analysis Tool for Unit-cost Modelling) project research (Scanlan et al, 2006). An open standards web driven method of collaboration is required to make it possible for organisations and individuals to become more deeply involved in projects that are well coordinated using web technologies. Shim et al explain how the use of web technologies to standardise user interface design across different models can dramatically improve the ease of use of decision support software. This standardisation can also ease problems of installation and maintenance.

(Morris et al, 2001) examine Interactivity and collaboration on the web. Aziz et al (2005) examine how open standards software can assist in an organisation's collaborative product development. This approach is outlined in (Ciancarini et al, 2001) that explains ways of designing a document-centric coordination application over the Internet. (Ciancarini et al. 2001) explain that web documents can be generated on the fly. This can allow the user interface to respond dynamically to choices. Program code can be attached to the documents themselves, and code can activate certain behaviour based on the XML (eXtensible Markup Language) content of the document. Code can also be created separately and called on as a service when a document needs it. (Nidamarthi et al (2001) explain how web based collaboration can aid the design process. (Huang and Mak, 2001) evaluate issues in the development and implementation of web applications for product design and manufacture. Reed et al (2000) show how web based modelling and simulation can be used in the aircraft design process. Kim et al (2002) explain their approach to modelling and simulation. Zhang et al (2004) review Internet-based product information sharing and visualisation. Li (2005) examines the role of web based services for distributed process planning optimization.

The intention is to further the research of others into the approach of web based collaboration, and use semantic web software and techniques to achieve this. The above research reinforced my view that this is a robust approach. Modelling collaborations based on these techniques would bring together experts in engineering, systems modelling, computing, and Human Computer Interaction.

More detail on this research can be found at - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ModellingSemanticWeb.htm

References

Shim, J.P., Warkentin, M., Courtney, J. F., Power, D J., 2002, Past, present, and future of decision support technology. Decision Support Systems 33 pp 111-126.

Power, D. J., 2006. Free Decision Support Systems Glossary - http://www.DSSResources.COM/glossary/.

Scanlan, J., Rao, A., Bru, C., Hale, P., Marsh, R., 2006. DATUM Project: Cost Estimating Environment for Support of Aerospace Design Decision Making. Journal of Aircraft, 43(4).

Morris, S., Neilson, I., Charlton, C., Little, J., 2001. Interactivity and collaboration on the WWW - is the 'WWW shell' sufficient?. Interacting with Computers, 13, pp 717-730.

Aziz, H., Gao, J., Maropoulos, P., Cheung, W. M., 2005. Open standard, open source and peer-to-peer tools and methods for collaborative product development. Computers in Industry, 56, pp 260-271.

Ciancarini, P., Rossi, D., Vitali, F. 2001. Designing a document-centric coordination application over the Internet. Interacting with Computers, 13, pp 677-693.

Nidamarthi, S., Allen, R. H., Ram, D. S., 2001. Observations from supplementing the traditional design process via Internet-based collaboration tools. Computer Integrated Manufacturing, 14(1), pp 95-107.

Huang, G. Q., Mak, K. L., 2001. Issues in the development and implementation of web applications for product design and manufacture. Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Vol 14(1), pp 125-135.

Reed, J. A., Follen, G. J., Afjeh, A. A., 2000. Improving the Aircraft Design Process Using Web-Based Modeling and Simulation. ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation, 10(1), pp 58-83.

Kim, T., Lee, T., Fishwick, P., 2002. A Two Stage Modeling and Simulation Process for Web-Based Modeling and Simulation. ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation, 12(3), 230-248.

Zhang, S., Weimen, S., Hamada, G., 2004. A review of Internet-based product information sharing and visualization. Computers in Industry, 54, pp 1-15.

Li, W. D., 2005. A Web-based service for distributed process planning optimization. Computers in Industry, 56, pp 272-288.

My Home Page is http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale

I have a page for this subject at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ModellingSemanticWeb.htm

am a member of the Institute for End User Computing (IEUC) - http://www.ieuc.org/home.html

User Driven Programming - UWE Graduate School Poster Presentation 2007

User Driven Programming

Poster I presentated on my research for the Graduate School http://www.uwe.ac.uk/cems/graduateschool/index.html - Graduate School Poster Events http://www.uwe.ac.uk/cems/graduateschool/news/poster.html.

PhD Poster

Peter Hale

Home page http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/

Introduction

SEEDS (Systems Engineering Estimation and Decision Support) team - involved in cost modelling solutions.

End User Programming

Why do we need to make it easier for end users to program?

Figure 1 - End User Programming

Based on data from US bureau of Labour Statistics. Sources - http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/papers/EUPchi2006overviewColor.pdf - Myers et al. Scaffidi, C., Shaw, M., Myers, B. (2005). Estimating the Numbers of End Users and End User Programmers, IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, (VL/HCC'05): 207-214 Dallas, Texas.

User Driven Programming

Software development is time consuming and error prone because of the need to learn computer languages.

Mitigating this allows users to devote full effort to the problem to be solved.

User Driven Programming creates software that enables people to program with visual representation of a tree diagram.

Applied to aerospace engineering but should be applicable to any subject.

Figure 2 - Source to Result TreeTranslation

Translation

The Ontology representation is translated into a computer model.

An Ontology defines relationships between things.

Relationships can be conveyed to a software model that evaluates them.

To achieve this the translator requires -

1Search trigger(s) resulting from user actions.

2Knowledge of the relationships between nodes in the tree.

3Ability to read a equations held in a standardised mathematical form.

4Rules of syntax for the language of the code to be output.

Figure 3 - Visualisation and Interaction Mechanism

Semantic Web Modelling system

1. Connections are established between the ontology system and any
databases, spreadsheets, or other systems that hold relevant information for
that modelling problem.


2. The ontology is created using RDF/OWL [2], and an interface built to
allow domain experts to edit the ontology.


3. Libraries are created in a partnership between ourselves and domain
experts.


4. Taxonomies are populated by model builders who want to use them for
their modelling problem. These are based on the libraries created in step 3.


5. Taxonomies are colour coded for ease of understanding, this part of
the diagram was built with Vanguard system (explained below). We have created a
link between the ontology tool and this decision support and calculation tool.
Vanguard system reads information from the ontology tool.


6. There are 2 sorts of constraints that can be used in order to make it
easier for users to build and adapt models. These are constraints on the way
the ontology, and models are built, and user interface constraints to reduce
the scope for error.


7. The colour coding makes calculation clearer because all taxonomies
can be used in any calculation, this results in a multicoloured result tree
that represents the entire calculation history. User choices affect how items
are related for the calculation; choices could be made manually or via a
search. Colour can also be used to represent cost, time, or uncertainty.


8. Each node can also represent uncertainty, and we have prototyped
including uncertainty expressions in the calculations.


9. The result tree can be represented on the web and in other programs,
this allows for further searching, processing and evaluation of results.
Visualisation techniques and the use of searchable languages such as XML, and
SVG can assist in this.


10. and 11. Experts such as designers can interact with the
ontology, the model, and results, it's intended that there will be a two way
feedback mechanism where the expert can make changes at any stage, and this
filter into changed results. This can then support a cycle of results and rework.

Figure 4 - Vanguard Studio Representation and Calculation

Visualisation

Figure 5 shows how the program visualises information for the spar and its' part definition, material, manufacturing processes etc.

Figure 5 - Vanguard Studio Visualisation

• This is an interactive view of the Vanguard Studio model that was read from Protégé.


• Changing the figures and pressing recalc results in a new calculation.


• 
  This tree is translated into SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) and JavaScript for an interactive CAD view.

Translations from Tree Based View to Component Diagram

Figure 6 shows the spar translated to XML and visualised using Flash multimedia. The spar is then translated and visualised in an SVG based interactive diagram.

Figure 6 - Tree View - XML - Flash - SVG Representation

Others in this kind of research

Kurt Cagle -Understanding XML - http://www.understandingxml.com/

General Electric - ACUITy enterprise modelling tool -Jena Conference Paper - http://jena.hpl.hp.com/juc2006/proceedings/crapo/paper.pdf - An Ontology-Based Architecture for Adaptive Work-Centered User Interface Technology - A Aragones, J Bruno, A Crapo, M Garbias.

Jena Conference Proceedings - http://jena.hpl.hp.com/juc2006/proceedings.html

Orbeon - http://www.orbeon.com/ - Orbeon XForms Presentation Server.

Protégé- Conference and Project Information - http://protege.stanford.edu/community/conferences.html

UWE - Christophe Bru - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~cbru/

Vanguard Global Knowledge Portal - http://wiki.vanguardsw.com/

Chris Wallace - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~cjwallac/

User Generated Content

This is a very useful BBC website article by Professor Michael Geist of the University of Ottawa

How to help users help themselves - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6270593.stm

A very important recommendation Professor Geist makes on actions Government can take relating to improving access to public research is this - "the introduction of open access requirements for publicly-funded research".

I agree with this point he makes.

Other content of the article is -

"Internet law professor Michael Geist describes how governments can help their citizens make the most of the web.

Time Magazine's choice late last month of "You" (by which it meant all the users generating content on the web) as the person of the year was mocked by critics as a poor choice that by-passed several notable political leaders.

Yet the choice may ultimately be viewed as the tipping point when the remarkable outbreak of internet participation that encompasses millions of bloggers, music remixers, amateur video creators, citizen journalists, wikipedians, and Flickr photographers broke into the mainstream."

Professor Geist explains "the role of government will be to support the enormous economic and cultural potential of user-generated content, while avoiding steps that might impede its growth."

How to help users help themselves - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6270593.stm 17 January 2007

BBC Technology news - Web users driving change in 2007 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6198125.stm - Mark Ward Technology Correspondent - 1st January 2007.

'You' named Time's person of 2006 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6187113.stm 17 December 2006

Below is a very good BBC Radio 4 program (downloadable - listen again) that explains how the new approaches to open source and web software allowing user-generated content is likely to affect business -

BBC Radio 4 - New Wave Computing - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/inbusiness/inbusiness_20070111.shtml - Peter Day talks to some of the rising stars of the new revolution and finds out how the computer industry is changing yet again 11th January 2007.

This report makes the case for increased use of open-source software -

BBC Technology news - Open source gets European boost - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6270657.stm - The European Commission has added its voice to the debate about the use of open source software. - 17 January 2007.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4849402.stm - BBC Podcast - 23 January 2007 - Open Source Software.

I have a web 2.0 and AJAX page at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/ajax.htm.

Adobe to End Support for SVG Viewer (January 1 2008)

This text is on the site of the Adobe SVG Player Download Page - 'Please note that Adobe has announced that it will discontinue support for Adobe SVG Viewer on January 1, 2008.'

Adobe to Discontinue Adobe SVG Viewer - http://www.adobe.com/svg/eol.html.

SVG expert Kurt Cagle's thoughts are mentioned in this article, where there is also discussion of this issue.

Wherefore art thou, SVG? - http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2006/09/wherefore_art_thou_svg.html - O'Reilly XML.com - Kurt Cagle - September 10, 2006.

I'm interested in any comments that people might have on this. SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)has been extremely important in my research because of the ease with which it is possible to extract geometric information from an SVG image. This allows for manipulation of this information to enable interactive updating of diagrams, graphs etc, and the ability to calculate values such as area. Also the CAD (Computer Aided Design) like abilities that SVG gives are very important in putting across engineering information, via the browser, to those who don't have CAD software installed on their PC.

Does anyone know of a way to continue the SVG support in browsers (I'm interested in support in any browsers, and have experimented with native support in Mozilla Firefox, and heard there is support in Opera, and I'm also interested if there are any plans for supporting SVG in future versions of Internet Explorer. I'm also interested in alternative ways of providing all the functionality mentioned within browsers such as development and support of alternative standards.

Its essential that SVG or a standard with similar functionality is supported in the browser as well as in PC based tools, as SVG is key to providing browser based Web 2.0 functionality using technology approaches based on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML). To do anything else goes against the reality that the browser is becoming the main application used by the majority of people, and is the primary means for communication of knowledge.

SVG.Open - http://www.svgOpen.org - SVG.Open 2007 Conference, Tokyo, Japan - September 2007.

Semantic Web and Semantic Grid Research

Research has been undertaken into how to apply the work of Tim Berners-Lee and others in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) (2006b), (Berners-Lee, 1999). In order to represent information it is necessary to use Meta-languages. The use of standards for sharing information and resources is core to research into the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web involves making the Web into a repository of knowledge, which can be catalogued and searched intelligently. Software agents could then undertake this search task. Berners-Lee and colleagues have envisaged the Semantic Web as a global database with the information held in a structured form where content is separated from formatting (Berners-Lee et al 2001) and (Berners-Lee, 2002). To achieve this, the structure is created using XML Meta-tags, and a stylesheet provides formatting. Stylesheets are also defined using XML. The Semantic Web should make information more understandable by machines and by humans. This can help people, and intelligent agents find the information they need.

The Grid and Semantic Web areas of research are converging. The ideas and technology behind the Grid are explained in (Foster et al, 2001a) and (Foster et al, 2001b). Universities are involved in Grid-computing research, Southampton (De Roure et al 2001a) and (De Roure et al, 2001b), Exeter, Liverpool John Moores (Alan et al, 2003) and (Naylor et al, 2003). Semantic Web and Grid researchers have recently become involved in the Semantic Grid. The Semantic Grid involves sharing of computer resources as well as information, and does not just apply to high performance computing applications. Semantic languages and ontologies can be part of a larger effort to provide a Grid of information and applications, which can be requested as required. If a user requests the answer to a problem using one computer, this can then get the help of others to solve it. Machine intelligence does not then reside in one machine but in the complex system of interacting machines.

Semantic Web Page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/RDF/RDF.htm

Semantic Web History - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/EndUserHistory/Semanticweb.htm

Semantic Web Modelling - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ModellingSemanticWeb.htm


References

Allan, A., Taylor, T., 2003. eSTAR:Telescopes and Databases as a Single Information Grid, Toward an International Virtual Observatory. Proceedings of the ESO/ESA/NASA/NSF Conference, Garching, Germany, 10-14 June 2002, ESO Astrophysics Symposia. ISBN 3-540-21001-6. Springer-Verlag Berlin/Heidelberg, pp 167.

Berners-Lee, T., 1999. The future of the Web http://www.w3.org/Talks/1999/0414-LCS35-tbl/slide1-1.html.

Berners-Lee, T., Hendler, J., Lassila, O., 2001. The Semantic Web. Scientific American, May 17, 2001.

Berners-Lee, T., 2002. The World Wide Web - Past Present and Future http://www.w3.org/2002/04/Japan/Lecture.html, Japan prize Commemorative Lecture.

De Roure, D., Baker, M. A, Jennings, N. R., Shadbolt, N. R., 2003. The Evolution of the Grid, Southampton University.

De Roure, D., Baker, M. A., Jennings, N. R., Shadbolt, N. R., 2003. The Semantic Grid: A Future e-Science Infrastructure, Southampton University.

Foster, I. Kesselman, C. Tuecke, S., 2001. The Anatomy of The Grid. International Journal of Supercomputer Applications, Argonne National Laboratory, University of Chicago, University of Southern California.

Foster, I., Kesselman C., Nick, J. M., Tuecke, S., 2001. The Physiology of The Grid, Argonne National Laboratory, University of Chicago, University of Southern California.

Naylor, T., Steele, I., Carter, D., Allan, A., Etherton, J., Mottram, C., 2003. eSTAR Building an Observational GRID. Astronomical Data Analysis Software & Systems (ADASS) Conference ASP Conference Series, 2003, Exeter University, Liverpool John Moores University, 295.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), 2006, Leading the Web to its Full Potential http://www.w3.org/.

Structured Representation of Information

The Need for Ontologies

Information is scattered within organisations and often not held in such a structured way as to be easily accessed by employees or software. This problem was examined by Lau et al (2005) using the example of McDonnell Douglas (now part of Boeing), that demonstrated how difficult it is to gather unstructured knowledge. Therefore, it is important that research is undertaken into methods of capturing, structuring, distributing, analysing, and visualising information.

Taxonomies, Ontologies and Structuring of Information

An ontology is a classification structure. A taxonomy can be just a convenient structure to assist programmers, or part of an overall 'thesaurus' which describes and agrees the meaning of things. This 'thesaurus' structure is the ontology and may contain one or more taxonomies. Engineers may have different names for the same thing, e.g. wing skin stiffeners may be referred to as stringers, but rib stiffeners are never called stringers. There is a relationship of stringer to stiffener, which needs to be defined, and this definition depends on the context. A classification scheme or ontology is necessary in order to make communication precise. Such an ontology can also be used to help non-specialists to understand the terminology of a particular domain. The ontology can also enable communication between the computer systems and users. Hunter (2002) explains how taxonomies can be the basis of the definitions for an ontology, and that commercial software is available. Hunter gives examples of the Ministry of Defense technology taxonomy, and the Boeing online ontology. The taxonomy "Type-Of" and "Part-Of" relationships can indicate how to construct the taxonomy. Veryard (2001) and McGuinness (2000) provide useful guides on how ontologies can assist in linking distributed data. This linking and connectivity is also explained in 'Ontologies and Semantics for Seamless Connectivity' Uschold and Gruninger (2004).

Knowledge based systems need to allow a variety of people in different disciplines to share knowledge across functional, departmental, and disciplinary boundaries. Consideration is needed of the further problem that certain knowledge should be shared with others outside the organisation such as suppliers, and customers.

There is a strong need for uniting of the approaches of top down ontology definition by a small group of experts with that of the bottom up approach of allowing all users to define the ontology. Software applications are needed that allow users with little software knowledge to edit and update ontologies themselves. The extent to which an organisation allows this depends on its structure but if this is completely prevented or not enabled in the first place, there will be user dissatisfaction resulting from their lack of involvement. It is also likely that progress in defining and editing the ontology would be delayed.

The varied user base of knowledge systems results in a further problem, which is that of fragmentation of the language itself. As the users are in different trades and professions they will not necessarily understand the same words, or assign to them the same meaning. Again this makes it necessary to structure the information in a knowledge-based system carefully, to ensure it can be well visualised, and agreements can be reached.

Relationships between terms such as type-of, and part-of become more important than the term itself, as the relationship defines the meaning of the term by relating it to the other terms. These relationships can then be represented in diagrammatic form and navigated, in order to allow the meaning of terms to be agreed and explained. A classification structure such as this is termed the ontology.

My objective is to build a catalogue and make use of it for decision support and costing systems, while demonstrating that the same approach could be used for other types of system(s). It is essential that this catalogue can query information from organisations' existing database systems. Most large organisations have key operational knowledge and information dispersed across different types of information systems, often in relational databases. This has the advantage of allowing the use of the standardised language Structured Query Language (SQL) to access this information.

This research is explained in greater depth at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ModellingSemanticWeb.htm and http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/RDF/RDF.htm.

References

Hunter, A., 2002. Engineering Ontologies http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/a.hunter/tradepress/eng.html.

Lau, H. C. W., Ning, A., Pun, K. F., Chin, K. S., Ip, W. H., 2005. A knowledge-based system to support procurement decision. Journal of Knowledge Management, 9(1), pp 87-100.

McGuinness, D. L., 2000. Conceptual Modeling for Distributed Ontology Environments. Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Conceptual Structures Logical, Linguistic, and Computational Issues (ICCS 2000), Darmstadt, Germany. August 14-18, 2000.

Uschold, M., Gruninger, M., 2004. Ontologies and Semantics for Seamless Connectivity, Association for Computer Machinery - Special Interest Group on Management of Data - SIGMOD Record December, 33(4).

Veryard R., 1994. Data Mappings http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~rxv/infomgt/datamapping.pdf - Soap Box Blog, 2006 http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~rxv/so/2006/11/semantic-coupling.htm.

End-User Modelling - The Need for Alternatives to Standard Spreadsheets

A consideration which influences my research into End-User Programming and Modelling is that organizations should not use proprietary or closed standards for their information. Systems should be designed with the assumption that information, which represents the primary system asset, may eventually need to be migrated to another software tool or environment. Open use of information was the priority for the DATUM project. This project is explained in 'DATUM Project: Cost Estimating Environment for Support of Aerospace Design Decision Making' (Scanlan et al, 2006). Therefore a requirement of this research is that open standard semantic languages are used to represent information, to be used both as input and output of the models. These languages are based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML). These same open standard languages can be used for developing the program code of models. It is proposed that software and information represented by the software, be separated but represented in the same open standard searchable way. Software and the information it manipulates are just information that has different uses, there is no reason why software must be represented differently from other information. So XML can be used both as the information input and output by the application, and for the definition of the model itself. The model can read or write information it represents, and the information can read from or write to the model. This recursion makes 'meta-programming' possible. Meta programming is writing of programs by other programs. The purpose of this is to provide a cascading series of layers that translate a relatively easy to use visual representation of a problem to be modelled, into code that can be run by present day compilers and interpreters. This is to make it easier for computer literate non-programmers to specify instructions to a computer, without learning and writing code in computer languages. To achieve this, any layer of software or information must be able to read the code or the information represented in any other. Code and information are only separated out as a matter of design choice to aid human comprehension, they can be represented in the same way using the same kinds of open standard languages. The methods used for this representation and translation are being researched.

End User Programming and Engineering Modelling

Many large companies have outsourced the management and support of their IT systems to third parties. Very strict management processes and procedures for the acquisition and implementation of new systems have been introduced. A side-effect of this policy is a tendency for employees to make extensive use of spreadsheets and macro programming languages for information storage, analysis, and manipulation (Scanlan et al, 2006). These applications establish themselves as a legitimate part of the business processes of the organization despite the essentially uncontrolled nature of their development. This is a worrying trend as these applications are frequently undocumented, rarely fully tested or validated, and are produced by people who often have little or no formal training in good systems development practice. An alternative approach of User Driven Modelling is required, because large spreadsheets are unmaintainable in the long run.

By their nature, large spreadsheets are difficult for a third party to comprehend as their inherent flexibility for editing allows users to generate a complex web of cell references which are arduous to audit. Panko (2000), Paine, (2003), and Scanlan et al (2006) examine this problem. Worse still, there is a tendency for the spreadsheet author to misguidedly compound the problem by expending a considerable amount of effort into hiding the detail behind an elaborate and visually attractive 'front end'. Should the author of such an application leave the organization, it is commonly abandoned as colleagues are reluctant to master its complexity and often refuse to take ownership of it, as they are busy with their main work. Paine states that spreadsheets have almost no features for building applications out of parts that can be developed and tested independently. Panko (2000) suggests that “Given data from recent field audits, most large spreadsheets probably contain significant errors.” The most recent audit he cites found errors in at least 86% of spreadsheets audited. In 1997 Panko reported that 90% of the spreadsheets audited in a study carried out by Coopers and Lybrand were found to have errors. In 'Automatic Generation and Maintenance of Correct Spreadsheets?' Erwig et al (2006) cite a figure of 90% from Rajalingham et al (2001) 'Classification of Spreadsheet Errors'. 'Given the billions of spreadsheets in use, this leaves the worlds of business and finance horribly vulnerable to programming mistakes' (Scanlan et al, 2006). The studies by Paine, and Panko show that the chances of any given spreadsheet cell containing an error are somewhere between 0.3 and 3%, so that a spreadsheet of only 100 cells has about a 30% chance of having one error or more. Aragones et al (2006) state - 'Desktop spreadsheet users are very creative in their adaptations, but
distributed spreadsheets have the problem of distributed, inconsistent inputs and distributed
results. There is no easy way to aggregate the collective wisdom of user experience'.

References

Aragones, A., Bruno, J., Crapo, A., Garbiras M., 2006. An Ontology-Based Architecture for Adaptive Work-Centered User Interface Technology. Jena User Conference, 2006, Bristol, UK [online]. Available from: http://jena.hpl.hp.com/juc2006/proceedings/crapo/paper.pdf.

Erwig, M., Abraham, R., Cooperstein, I., Kollmansberger S., 2006. Automatic Generation and Maintenance of Correct Spreadsheets?. Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Software engineering, St. Louis, MO, USA pp 136-145 [online]. Available from: http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~erwig/papers/Gencel_ICSE05.pdf

Paine, J., 2003. Spreadsheet Structure Discovery with Logic Programming, Proceedings of European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group EuSpRIG Greenwich, England.

Panko, R. P., 2000. Spreadsheet Errors: What We Know, What We Think We Can Do. Proceedings of European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group EuSpRIG, Greenwich, England, pp. 7–17.

Scanlan, J., Rao, A., Bru, C., Hale, P., Marsh, R., 2006. DATUM Project: Cost Estimating Environment for Support of Aerospace Design Decision Making. Journal of Aircraft, 43(4).

Web Software

In 2007 the main software change will be the increased use of web software.

In this BBC article 'Web users driving change in 2007' by Mark Ward, Phillippe Courtot (chairman of online security firm Qualys) explains -

"You cannot keep on developing software the old ways, The costs of distribution and support are higher and higher and the customers are less and less satisfied. Instead of buying a licence for a program and developing applications themselves, companies will move in great numbers towards firms offering software as a service via the web browser. It's going to be much more visible than it has at any other time."

Web users driving change in 2007 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6198125.stm - By Mark Ward Technology Correspondent, BBC News website.