Collaboration and real-time analysis in the spreadsheet space

The SpreadSheet Space is a virtual space to connect spreadsheets. Users can configure permanent connections among spreadsheets as well as between spreadsheets and external data sources to keep their spreadsheets aligned among them and/or synchronized with external data sources. The paper focuses on two ways to exploit the Spreadsheet Space paradigm, namely Collaboration, which refers to spreadsheet alignment, and real-time data, which refers to synchronization with external data sources. In addition, the paper presents the architecture of the software platform which provides the operational and management services needed to support the SpreadSheet Space. The main idea proposed in this paper is to use Excel as a software client for collaboration and real-time data analysis.