Meta patterns are the key to making XBRL easier for business people. This is an updated explanation of what meta patterns are and how they make XBRL easier.
Recall that you can grab sample XBRL instances and XBRL taxonomies of the meta patterns I have created here.
The US GAAP Taxonomy has meta patterns. [Table]s, [Roll Forward]s, and a few others are explicitly identified. It has [Roll Up]s and [Hierarchy]s which are not explicitly itentified, but they do exist. Leveraging patterns like these is done all the time by information technology professionals. Soon, business reporting tools will leverage these meta patterns to make working with XBRL easier for business users.