Digital Financial Reporting

Altova, maker of the popular XML Spy, announced a new product RaptorXMLwhich they say is a new generation of XML and XBRL processor.  You can see the datasheet for Altova RaptorXML here.

To be very clear, RaptorXML is a technical user tool and not something that an accountant will be using.  Perhaps some accountants will, but not many.

There are two things which I find very interesting about RaptorXML. The first is XBRL's billing right next to XML in this application.  XML and XBRL seem "side-by-side".  If RaptorXML does everything that Altova says that it will do such as support for XBRL Formula, XBRL Dimensions; then this will be quite a developer tool!  While this is not directly a great thing for accountants, indirectly it is a VERY good thing for accountants.  The functionality provided by RaptorXML should provide software developers with some very powerful and fast tools.

The second thing that I find interesting is lack of the mention of RDF.  Not sure that this really matters because one can simply take what RaptorXML provides you and then pass it to an RDF database or other RDF/OWL/SPARQL capable tool.

While RaptorXML knows nothing about financial report semantics, it does seem like it will provide necessary functionality at the technical syntax level.  Other processing layers can add what digital financial reporting or a term that I like even better, semantic financial reporting.

Smart data, smart applications will be part of your future sooner than you may think. The SEC's RoboCop will perhaps use RaptorXML.  Who know.  Maybe it already does.