sheetsflat

Sheetsflat is a fictional data format and library designed to model spreadsheet data as a single flat collection of records. It aims to unify the flexibility of spreadsheets with the performance of flat-file formats by representing each cell as a record with fields: sheet, row, column, value, and data type. A sheet is a collection of rows; multiple sheets can be stored in one document. Metadata supports formatting hints, data types, and formulas as serialized expressions.

Design and data model: The core model uses a flat table of cells, with optional sheet-level metadata and a separate index that maps sheet names to their cell ranges. Data types include string, number, boolean, date. Formulas can be stored as text or parsed into an expression tree for evaluation by a runtime.

Serialization and interoperability: Sheetsflat documents can be encoded in JSON Lines, a compact binary variant, or a YAML-based variant. They are designed to be read and written in streaming fashion, enabling partial loading of large documents. The format includes optional compression to reduce storage.

Use cases and scope: Sheetsflat is intended for data interchange between spreadsheet tools, databases, and analytics pipelines; it simplifies exporting multi-sheet workbooks into a single document and supports round-tripping with existing formats via converters.

History and status: Sheetsflat emerged in demonstrations of unified spreadsheet data modeling in the early 2020s within open data communities. It remains a loosely defined concept rather than an official standard.

See also: CSV, Excel, JSON, Parquet, YAML.