Digital Financial Reporting

XBRL Site (http://www.xbrlsite.com) is a web site that I maintain to provide additional information about XBRL.  If you have been their, you will know that the web pages were pretty plain.  That is because I don't put a lot of effort into making them look pretty because I was editing the pages in Microsoft Word.

Well, guess what I got for Christmas.  An iMac.  I use it for my photography and video editing.  It also has a web page editor, iWeb.  I figured I would fiddle with that and use that to maintain the XBRLSITE.COM web site.  (By the way, I really like the iMac.  Another reason I got an iMac is the tight "integration" of the iMac, iTunes, my iPod Touch, and things.  I think Apple is creating some really nice hardware and software, wanted to check it out.)

If you have not checked out XBRLSITE.COM you may want to do so.  There is actually more there than what you see on the meager three pages which you see when you go to the site.  Most of the other content is referenced from this blog to that web site.  Plus there is other stuff which I experiment with and don't really link to at all, other than email discussions with others working with XBRL.

By the way...thanks for the iMac Santa!

More exploring and discovering.  I was able to find some ontologies for XBRL which others have created.  See this web page: http://rhizomik.net/html/ontologies/bizontos/.

On that page, you see several ontologies which relate to XBRL:

• XBRL Instance: http://rhizomik.net/ontologies/2007/11/xbrl-instance-2003-12-31.owl
• XBRL Linkbase: http://rhizomik.net/ontologies/2007/11/xbrl-linkbase-2003-12-31.owl
• XLink: http://rhizomik.net/ontologies/2007/11/xlink-2003-12-31.owl
• XL (Low level stuff used by XLink:  http://rhizomik.net/ontologies/2007/11/xl-2003-12-31.owl
• US GAAP Taxonomy Piece (note that this is an old version): http://rhizomik.net/ontologies/2008/07/us-gaap-ci-2005-02-28.owl

This is stuff is way, way, way too low a level to be even remotely useful in making use of XBRL information.  Maybe this level is necessary, I really cannot tell yet.  But, what is the utility of an OWL model for the XBRL syntax at this level?  Even this level is really too low!

What I am attempting to do with my OWL model is to map the upper level stuff (financial reporting, multidimensional model, taxonomy concepts) to the lower level XBRL syntax which should ultimately be invisible to business users.

Perhaps my XBRL syntax level needs to be connected to the lower level stuff for some technical reason, I really don't know at this point.

Maybe I am missing something, but from what I have seen there appears to be a not seeing the forest through the trees situation when people are trying to reconcile how XBRL and RDF/OWL fit together.

Pressing onward...

I am continuing to fiddle around with RDF/OWL.  I updated my little index page which summarizes my brainstorming. I added an RSS feed to enable grabbing all of the ontologies with an application.  In doing that a question that popped into my mind is whether the "RSS feed" really should also be an ontology or in RDF rather than in RSS.  So, I did some checking.  I don't know that I got this correct, but I created an ontology of ontologies.  I will get to the correct approach, but if you look at this you should have the same questions that I had.

Another thing I tried to do is model all the pieces that I am seeing, which I did in this little box diagram. There are many things that I am seeing from that diagram which I will get to later in other posts.  One primary thing I see is something which I touched on before, but now want to expand on a little.

There seems to be a "spectrum" of approaches to implementing a system for exchanging information:

• Something: Some approach, proprietary pieces and standard pieces, does not even have to be XML, it could be JSON based or CSV files, whatever.
• XML + Something: You could use XML and the old approach of a DTD, and a bunch of other proprietary or standard stuff.
• XML + XML Schema + Something: You could use XML and XML Schema plus some other proprietary and standard stuff.
• XBRL + Something: You could use XBRL and some other proprietary and/or standard stuff.
• XML-based Language + Something: You could use some other XML language and then add some other proprietary and/or standard stuff.
• RDF + Something: You could use RDF alone and then add some other proprietary and/or standard stuff.
• OWL/RDF + Something: You could use OWL/RDF and then some other proprietary and/or standard stuff.

This analysis may seem odd, but I see two things.  First, each solution needs "something" more.  The second is that the something can be a combination of standard and proprietary stuff.  That "something" has a cost associated with it.

The truth is you probably have a multitude of systems which exchange information, maybe even one from every option in the spectrum.  Well, that is what the Semantic Web is about, solving the problem of multiple formats and using the information from all the different systems as one big set of information.  That grand vision is what RDF and OWL are for, the standard format.

So, what is that "something"?  Think about it.  Knowing that is really the $64,000 question.  Knowing the answer helps one choose between the different options.  What, you don't exchange business information with anyone?  Really.

I will look at breakind down that "something" in later blog posts.  Stay tuned...

I discussed the notion of an information model and discussed [Table]s in other blog posts. I showed inconsistencies in the information model of SEC XBRL filings in my analysis of those filings and summarized suggestions as to how to create investor friendly SEC XBRL filings (see #6 which relates to following the US GAAP Taxonomy information model).

I created a little cheat sheet which helps people understand that information model.  I am trying to explain visually the relationships between, for example, a [Table], [Axis] and [Line Items].  This may not be apparent from looking at the US GAAP Taxonomy.  But once you see them, you will see why this is a guide to how to SEC filers should extend the US GAAP Taxonomy.  Meaning, why would the US GAAP Taxonomy go through the trouble to structure the taxonomy so consistently and why would filers NOT follow the structure of the US GAAP Taxonomy?  Clearly you can imagine that everyone creating their company extension taxonomies in various unique different ways can be both confusing to users and hard for any rendering engine to deal with.

I hope this graphical model is helpful in identifying these information modeling metapatterns and following them.

Further, imagine software applications which leveraged these information modeling patterns and let users edit at the information model level (i.e. you deal with the patterns, not the lower level XBRL syntax).  This will make creating SEC XBRL filings much, much easier.