Enterprises have been transferring their data storage and processing to the cloud in an effort to benefit from its economic advantage and service availability. Accountants and, in particular, small business owners, are affected by this trend as they are having to become confident with the intricacies of a number of cloud-based accounting tools and services, in place of familiar tools, to generate and visualise reports among other routine tasks.

The University of Malta and Scope Solutions are collaborating in a project called DataDear which aims to offer the vast opportunities of the cloud to accountants without disturbing their workflow. This is achieved by providing a service acting as a bridge between the cloud and the accountant’s familiar tools of operation. For a significant part of their career, accountants use spreadsheets for data processing. DataDear leverages the familiar spreadsheet as the front-end for the accountant’s data and operations in the context of cloud applications.

In this novel spreadsheet approach, the enormous power and complexity of the cloud is hidden away from its user and their workflow is not disrupted. The spreadsheet becomes the central tool and reference point for the accountant in place of other services and data sources. Among other things, the end-user can post journal entries and purchase orders and get reports from the spreadsheet comfort zone. This application is a testament to the flexibility and longevity of the spreadsheet model.

Despite having a seemingly infinite number of resources available with the cloud, its pay-per-use model is a main motivator for using these resources diligently – inefficient use of resources results in increased service operating costs. For this reason, asynchronous patterns and event-driven programming are some of the techniques considered for making better use of available resources.

By making the spreadsheet central to several isolated data sources, conflict in the representations of data is another challenge. As data from one source changes, its corresponding representation needs to be reflected, otherwise it may no longer remain relevant. If such conflict is visible to the end-user, especially considering the financial nature of the data, this not only fosters a sense of mistrust but can also mislead the business into performing misinformed decisions.

There are several concurrency challenges present in this technology related to scaling out, dynamic elasticity, interoperability of services and handling of multiple requests, but service availability and application responsiveness cannot falter. DataDear aims to overcome these challenges, hence insulating accountants against the vast selection of available tools and radical changes by offering the convenience of resorting to an established tool within their profession.

Project DataDear financed by the Malta Council for Science and Technology through Fusion: The R&I Technology Development Programme 2017. Thomas Mercieca is the researcher working on this project under the supervision of Dr Joseph G. Vella (Deptartment of Computer Information Systems) and Dr Kevin Vella (Deptartment of Computer Science), in collaboration with Scope Solutions, a local expert in cloud-based software whose solutions are sought after by accountants. The University of Malta is contributing its expertise in cloud computing for leveraging this innovative technology.

Did you know?

• People have only been on earth about 2.5 million years. Dinosaurs lived for about 160 million years, which is about 64 times longer than people have been around.

• The word ‘dinosaur’, coined by British paleontologist Richard Owen in 1842, is Greek, meaning ‘terrible lizard’. Rather than implying that dinosaurs were fearsome, Owen used the term to refer to their majesty and size.

• No one knows exactly how long a dinosaur’s lifespan was. Some scientists speculate some dinosaurs lived for as long as 200 years.

• The toothiest dinosaur was the hadrosaur. It could have over 1,000 teeth and it continually grew new ones.

For more trivia see: www.um.edu.mt/think.

Sound bites

• People in almost every region of the world could benefit from rebalancing their diets to eating optimal amounts of various foods and nutrients, according to the Global Burden of Disease study tracking trends in consumption of 15 dietary factors from 1990 to 2017 in 195 countries. In 2017, more deaths were caused by diets with too low amounts of foods such as wholegrains, fruit, nuts and seeds than by diets with high levels of foods like trans fats, sugary drinks and high levels of red and processed meats.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190403193702.htm

• Taking at least 20 minutes out of your day to stroll or sit in a place that makes you feel in contact with nature will significantly lower your stress hormone levels. That’s the finding of a study that has established for the first time the most effective dose of an urban nature experience. Healthcare practitioners can use this discovery to prescribe ‘nature-pills’ in the knowledge that they have a real measurable effect.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190404074915.htm

For more soundbites listen to Radio Mocha on Mondays at 7pm on Radju Malta and Thursdays at 4pm on Radju Malta 2.

https://www.fb.com/RadioMochaMalta/

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