XBRL
XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) is an open international standard that enables exchange of business information. XBRL is used by governments, financial institutions, and businesses, primarily for financial and regulatory reporting. XBRL is managed by XBRL International.
A company or organization may have different business needs in conjunction with XBRL (for example, XBRL validation, creation of XBRL data, creation of new XBRL taxonomies, export of XBRL data to other formats). Various Altova products make it possible to accomplish XBRL-related tasks as follows:
•XMLSpy edits or creates new taxonomies and generates XBRL reports based on XSLT transformation files (XSLT transformation files can be created in StyleVision).
•StyleVision creates taxonomy stylesheets/templates, allowing you to generate XBRL reports.
•MapForce maps data to or from XBRL instance files. You can map XBRL data to or from other formats supported by MapForce (such as Microsoft Excel 2007 and later, databases, or CSV files). For example, you can filter specific data from existing XBRL instance documents, or create XBRL instances from data extracted from a database.
•RaptorXML+XBRL Server is a cross-platform XBRL processor which validates XBRL instances and taxonomies.
•Altova XBRL add-ins for Excel enable businesses to prepare and validate XBRL reports using Microsoft Excel.
While a full introduction to XBRL is beyond the scope of this documentation, the following terms are frequently used in conjunction with XBRL:
•XBRL Taxonomy. A taxonomy is like a dictionary of all concepts that may occur in the XBRL report. It also define rules for organizing the concepts hierarchically.
•XBRL Instance. The XBRL instance is a document which contains the so-called "facts" to be reported. The actual definition of concepts and hierarchical relationships between them is provided by the taxonomy.
In order to map data to or from XBRL instance files in MapForce, the underlying XBRL taxonomy is required. The taxonomy consists of a file archive (usually .zip) which is provided by the organization or entity to which XBRL data is submitted. The following are examples of taxonomies that can be used for data mapping with MapForce:
•US-GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), published by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (http://www.fasb.org)
•IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards), published by the IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) Foundation (http://www.ifrs.org)
•COREP / FINREP (Common Reporting and Financial Reporting), published by the European Banking Authority (http://www.eba.europa.eu)
You can install or uninstall XBRL taxonomies across all XBRL-enabled Altova products from the XBRL Taxonomy Manager.
To resolve URIs in XBRL documents, MapForce uses a catalog mechanism that maps URIs to files on the local system. This is in large part due to the size of the taxonomies and the fact that they contain thousands of files. Accessing the taxonomy files over the Internet would result in extremely slow performance, even if their issuing organizations served them that way. Note that the catalog mechanism relies on XBRL taxonomy packages installed locally on your computer. By default, no XBRL taxonomy packages are installed. Consequently, when you open a mapping that contains XBRL components, MapForce may display a dialog box asking you to install the required XBRL taxonomy packages. In addition, you can always view and manage all the installed XBRL taxonomies from XBRL Taxonomy Manager.
Supported XBRL standards
MapForce supports the following XBRL-related standards:
•XBRL Dimensions Specification 1.0
•Table Linkbase Specification 1.0 (see Working with XBRL Tables)
•Taxonomy Packages 1.0 (see XBRL Taxonomy Packages)
•Inline XBRL 1.0 and 1.1, including Transformation Registry 3 (only for reading data). See also Reading Data from Inline XBRL.
•XII Transformation Registry 5 Specification