An investigation into transforming spreadsheet data using XML: A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Applied Computing (Honours)

Abstract

Spreadsheets used for managing data often have problems when the data is stored in an unnormalised way. These problems can be solved by creating normalised tables in a database. The process for transforming the data is difficult when done by hand. We propose a way of using Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) to transform spreadsheet data. Transforming spreadsheets data using XSLT was first investigated in a simple way which was for a particular transformation. We tried a more general applicable method using parameters in XSLT. The trials of transforming spreadsheet using XSLT are the basic of the further research about spreadsheet normalisation and transformation.