Toward Reverse Engineering of VBA Based Excel Spreadsheet Applications

TL;DR

This paper discusses reverse engineering techniques and a tool for extracting conceptual data and business logic models from VBA-based Excel applications, addressing challenges in maintaining unstructured spreadsheet systems.

Contribution

It introduces two novel reverse engineering techniques and a prototype tool specifically designed for VBA-based Excel spreadsheets, aiding in understanding and restructuring.

Findings

Two reverse engineering techniques developed

A prototype tool for extracting data and logic models

Improved understanding of complex spreadsheets

Abstract

Modern spreadsheet systems can be used to implement complex spreadsheet applications including data sheets, customized user forms and executable procedures written in a scripting language. These applications are often developed by practitioners that do not follow any software engineering practice and do not produce any design documentation. Thus, spreadsheet applications may be very difficult to be maintained or restructured. In this position paper we present in a nutshell two reverse engineering techniques and a tool that we are currently realizing for the abstraction of conceptual data models and business logic models.