SpreadDB: Spreadsheet-Based User Interface for Querying and Updating Data of External Databases

Spreadsheet software is a software application capable of organizing, storing and analyzing data in tabular form. However, it has many limitations such as poor performance on large data sets, and lack of efficient and secured data sharing. In order to overcome these limitations, many organizations promote their users to store their data into databases. However, databases lack in the ease of use since they request database users to use SQL which is a standard language for querying and editing information stored in the databases. Since SQL is difficult for many end users to learn, database utilization of some parts of organizations does not progress. In order to relief users' burden of learning SQL, we propose SpreadDB which is a spreadsheet-based user interface for querying and updating database data. SpreadDB enables users to design spreadsheet templates used to perform data query and data update. We also present security measures of SpreadDB that prevent unauthorized persons from accessing and modifying database data