Digital Financial Reporting

This could be a bit abstract for people, but it is helping me understand relations so I am mentioning it.  Here there is this notion of what is called a function machine. A function machine relates to having some object and having a desire to map that first object to some other object.  This function machine metaphor helps one understand what is trying to be achieve with what I call type-subtype or wider-narrower or general-special relations.

I have talked about this in terms of whole-part relations previously.

This has to do with set theory, relations on a set.  There seem to be three fundamental relation properties that are used to build/describe relations: reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity.  Those terms tend to be too abstract for most business professionals to get their heads around, including myself.  Business professionals don’t really care about the underlying theoretical building blocks; they care about what comes out of the function machine when you put something into that machine.  HOW the right result is obtained mathematically is of less interest.

Trying to “cram” every relation into the same “function machine”, in the case below “general-special” function machine, is like how “parent-child” relations work in XBRL presentation relations, or rather how different people interpret those relations in different ways and because there is only ONE relation (parent-child) they end up reading meaning into the relationship to suit their needs.  This results into many different interpretations.  This is partially why the “wider-narrower” rules of the SEC don’t work.  They are far too ambiguous.

It seems to me that having many sets of more specific relations is better than one big set of general relations.

One feature of SBRM it seems is that it is far less abstract that OWL/SHACL.  I would not under estimate the value of having something more concrete and tangible.

Turning every business professional into a knowledge engineer is never going to happen.  Making knowledge engineering ideas simpler for business people to understand has a much higher probability of success.