Logical Theory Describing a Business Report
Sunday, February 10, 2019 at 01:54PM
Charlie in Becoming an XBRL Master Craftsman

A logical theory defines and describes things. Details must be explained to brainless robots.  Once you define things you can ask questions. Interestingly, the discipline of describing something in a form a computer algorithm can understand assists you in understanding the world better, weeding out myths and misconceptions.

Several years ago Rene van Egmond and I wrote a logical theory which describes a financial report, Financial Report Semantics and Dynamics Theory.

We used that base, removed everything related to the domain of financial reporting (which is a specialization of a business report), and now we have a Logical Theory Describing a Business Report (the more general use case).

There really are very few differences.  One difference is that a financial report has "disclosures".  The equivalent in a business report is a "fact set".

A logical theory is an excellent communications tool. In order to get a software engineer or a team of software engineers to be able to work together and build the right software, a logical theory is very helpful.

If anyone has any feedback, please send it.  Always looking for ways to improve!

 

Article originally appeared on XBRL-based structured digital financial reporting (http://xbrl.squarespace.com/).
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