Petricek, Tomas (2017) Data exploration through dot-driven development. In: ECOOP 2017. ECOOP’17. . 21:1-21:27. Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum ISBN 978-3-95977-035-4. (doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2017.0) (KAR id:67139)
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2017.0 |
Abstract
Data literacy is becoming increasingly important in the modern world. While spreadsheets make simple data analytics accessible to a large number of people, creating transparent scripts that can be checked, modified, reproduced and formally analyzed requires expert programming skills. In this paper, we describe the design of a data exploration language that makes the task more accessible by embedding advanced programming concepts into a simple core language.
The core language uses type providers, but we employ them in a novel way -- rather than providing types with members for accessing data, we provide types with members that allow the user to also compose rich and correct queries using just member access (``dot''). This way, we recreate functionality that usually requires complex type systems (row polymorphism, type state and dependent typing) in an extremely simple object-based language.
We formalize our approach using an object-based calculus and prove that programs constructed using the provided types represent valid data transformations. We discuss a case study developed using the language, together with additional editor tooling that bridges some of the gaps between programming and spreadsheets. We believe that this work provides a pathway towards democratizing data science -- our use of type providers significantly reduce the complexity of languages that one needs to understand in order to write scripts for exploring data.
Item Type: | Conference or workshop item (Proceeding) |
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DOI/Identification number: | 10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2017.0 |
Subjects: | Q Science > QA Mathematics (inc Computing science) > QA 76 Software, computer programming, |
Divisions: | Divisions > Division of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences > School of Computing |
Depositing User: | Tomas Petricek |
Date Deposited: | 25 May 2018 16:33 UTC |
Last Modified: | 05 Nov 2024 11:07 UTC |
Resource URI: | https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/67139 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes) |
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