Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

European Initiatives

FP7 & H2020 Projects

• Type: IDEAS

• Defi:

• Instrument: ERC Proof of Concept Grant 2018

• Objectif: Static Analysis for the VErification of Spreadsheets

• Duration: January 2019 - June 2020

• Coordinator: Inria (France)

• Partner: None

• Inria contact: Xavier Rival

• Abstract: Spreadsheet applications (such as Microsoft Excel + VBA) are heavily used in a wide range of application domains including engineering, finance, management, statistics and health. However, they do not ensure robustness properties, thus spreadsheet errors are common and potentially costly. According to estimates, the annual cost of spreadsheet errors is around 7 billion dollars. For instance, in 2013, a series of spreadsheet errors at JPMorgan incurred 6 billion dollars trading losses. Yet, expert reports estimate about 90 % of the spreadsheets contain errors. The MemCAD ERC StG project opened the way to novel formal analysis techniques for spreadsheet applications. We propose to leverage these results into a toolbox able to safely verify, optimize and maintain spreadsheets, so as to reduce the likelihood of spreadsheet disasters. This toolbox will be commercialized by the startup MatrixLead .