An Algorithm for Documenting Relationships in a Set of Reports

A typical tabular business report contains a set of cells. The cells may contain raw numeric values, character labels, and formulas. This paper will present a bottom-up algorithm for visually documenting the cells in a set of tabular reports. The algorithm draws a tree-like structure in a view port. The nodes in the tree can represent the either a raw numeric value or a formula. The arcs in the tree show which nodes share common variables in their respective formulas. In a requirements driven environment, this visual documentation allows the programmer and the system analyst to trace the final programmed reports (i.e. the final product) back to the requirements documentation.