Augmenting spreadsheets with constraint satisfaction

The popularity of the spreadsheet attests to its success at providing a usable programming interface to users with no programming experience. This success prompts the question of how a spreadsheet could be extended to be more powerful while retaining its ease of use. Adding the ability to express and satisfy constraints within the spreadsheet would enable it to be used to solve more complex problems. In this paper, a model for adding constraint satisfaction to a spreadsheet is given. It is designed to be spreadsheet-centric, in that the means to define and solve constraint networks is designed to be familiar to spreadsheet users. The model is implemented using Microsoft Excel and is contrasted with other models of adding constraint satisfaction to spreadsheets.