Learning constraints in spreadsheets and tabular data

Abstract

Spreadsheets, comma separated value files and other tabular data representations are in wide use today. However, writing, maintaining and identifying good formulas for tabular data and spreadsheets can be time-consuming and error-prone. We investigate the automatic learning of constraints (formulas and relations) in raw tabular data in an unsupervised way. We represent common spreadsheet formulas and relations through predicates and expressions whose arguments must satisfy the inherent properties of the constraint. The challenge is to automatically infer the set of constraints present in the data, without labeled examples or user feedback. We propose a two-stage generate and test method where the first stage uses constraint solving techniques to efficiently reduce the number of candidates, based on the predicate signatures. Our approach takes inspiration from inductive logic programming, constraint learning and constraint satisfaction. We show that we are able to accurately discover constraints in spreadsheets from various sources.