SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROCESSING DATA IN AN ELECTRONIC SPREADSHEET IN ACCORDANCE WITH A DATA TYPE

An electronic spreadsheet, formed in accordance with the present invention, providing a user with improved data processing capability, includes displaying a visual presentation to the user, the visual presentation including a matrix, the matrix including columns, rows and cells, the cells being formed at intersections of the columns and the rows. The electronic spreadsheet associates objects and formulas with the cells, each object having an object type, each formula receiving an object as an argument, each formula having an operator for operating on the object received as the argument. Further, the electronic spreadsheet evaluates each formula, which includes assigning to the operator in each formula an operative expression selected in accordance with the object type of the object received as the argument of each formula. Still further, the electronic spreadsheet associates a result, obtained during the evaluating procedure, with each cell associated with each formula operating on the object. An additional feature of the invention is that it can be programmed to recognize new data types through user programming or other means. In addition, the invention has been implemented in a client-server computing environment, and in such a way to take advantage of the Java programming environment.