Excelsior writes its own spreadsheets

An Oxford researcher has written a high-level language called Excelsior with a compiler that can generate Excel spreadsheets.

Jocelyn Paine, who lectures in Artificial Intelligence and works as a consultant, says it can save a lot of time by because the same program can be used to generate different sizes of spreadsheets.

"This is very useful for … developers who need to produce many different versions," he said.

Excelsior describes spreadsheets in terms of named tables, declared in a similar way to C++ or Java arrays. Formulas use Excel syntax but refer to table names rather than cell addresses, making programs easier to understand, according to Paine.

Paine has used the system for financial modelling but has posted an example that models rabbit-fox populations over different time scales – and another that generates Sci-fi stories.

He is selling copies of Excelsior for £350 at www.spreadsheet-factory.com but admits that it won't suit all Excel users because it lacks a graphical interface: the compiler is driven by a command line, and the programs are text files.

"However, the Excelsior language is small, and easy to learn if you know languages such as C++, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, or Ruby."

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