What Is XBRL?

Reference:

XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language. It is one of a family of XML languages, which is becoming a standard means of communicating financial data between businesses and on the internet. Instead of treating financial information as a block of text, as in a standard internet page or a printed document, it provides an identifying tag for each individual item of data. This is computer readable. For example, company net profit has its own unique tag. However, these tags are more than simple identifiers. They provide a range of information about the item, such as whether it is a monetary item, percentage, or fraction. XBRL allows labels in any language to be applied to items, as well as accounting references or other subsidiary information.

XBRL can show how items are related to one another. It can thus represent how they are calculated. It can also identify whether they fall into particular groupings for organizational or presentational purposes.

XBRL Taxonomies are the dictionaries that the language uses. These are the categorization schemes that define the specific tags for individual items of data (such as "net profit"). National jurisdictions have different accounting regulations, so each may have its own taxonomy for financial reporting. Many different organizations, including regulators, specific industries, or even companies, may also require taxonomies to cover their own business reporting needs. A special taxonomy has also been designed to support collation of data and internal reporting within organizations. This is the GL taxonomy.


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Example: Sample XBRL

Below is a small example of XBRL:

Below is what the XBRL example represents:


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Reference: XBRL Terminology

The following chart lists and defines XBRL terminology.

Term

Definition

abstract element

An element for which the attribute abstract in its XML schema declaration has the value "true" and which, therefore, cannot be used in an XML instance.

aggregator

A dimension member that represents the result of summing facts about other members of the same dimension.

Example: In the products dimension, the member "TotalProducts" is the aggregator of all possible products.

See dimension member.

alias concept

The concept at the "to" end of a definition arc with arc role http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/essence alias.

Alias and essence concepts have the same definition in the sense that valid values for an alias concept are always valid values for essence concepts to which they are related by an essence-alias relationship.

alias item

An item in an instance whose element is an alias concept.

arc

Arcs relate concepts to each other by associating their locators. Arcs also associate concepts with resources by connecting the concept locators to the resources themselves. Arcs are also used to connect fact locators to footnote resources in footnote extended links.

Arcs have a set of attributes that document the nature of the relationships expressed in extended links. Importantly all arcs have an xlink:arcrole attribute that determines the semantics of the relationship they describe.

c-equal

Context-equal: Items or sets or sequences of items having the same item type in s-equal contexts.

ancestor, child, descendant, grandparent, parent, sibling, uncle

Relationships among elements in an XBRL instance: using the terminology of [XPATH], for any element E, another element F is its:

  • ancestor only if F appears on the ancestor axis of E.
  • child only if F appears on the child axis of E.
  • descendant only if F appears on the descendant axis of E.
  • grandparent only if F is the parent of the parent of E.
  • parent only if F appears on the parent axis of E.
  • sibling only if F appears on the child axis of the parent of E and is not E itself.
  • uncle only if F is a sibling of the parent of E.

concept

Concepts are defined in two equivalent ways. In a syntactic sense, a concept is an XML Schema element definition, defining the element to be in the item element substitution group or in the tuple element substitution group. At a semantic level, a concept is a definition of a kind of fact that can be reported about the activities or nature of a business activity.

concrete element

An element for which the attribute abstract in its XML schema declaration has the value "false" and which, therefore, may appear in an XML instance.

context

Contexts are elements that occur as children of the root element in XBRL instances. They document the entity, the period and the scenario that collectively give the appropriate context for understanding the values of items.

dimension

Each one of the different aspects by which a fact may be characterized. A dimension is a (possibly empty or possibly infinite) set of members. A typical example of a dimension is the "product" dimension that identifies for a concept (Sales) each one of the possible products that its fact can be expressed about.

dimension member

Each one of the possibilities we can choose from the whole Dimension set.

Example: In the "Products Dimension" each one of the products is a Dimension Member.

Discoverable Taxonomy Set (DTS)

A DTS is a collection of taxonomy schemas and linkbases. The bounds of a DTS are such that the DTS includes all taxonomy schemas and linkbases that can be discovered by following links or references in the taxonomy schemas and linkbases included in the DTS. At least one taxonomy schema in a DTS must import the xbrl-instance-2003-12-31.xsd schema.

duplicate items

Two items of the same concept in the same context under the same parent.

duplicate tuples

Two occurrences of a tuple with all their descendants having the same content. More precisely, tuples that are p-equal, all of whose tuple children have a duplicate (except for being p-equal) in the other tuple, and all of whose item children have a duplicate (except for being p-equal) in the other tuple.

element

An XML element defined using XML Schema.

entity

A business entity, the subject of XBRL items. Where the [XML]/[SGML] concept of syntactic "entity" is meant, this will be pointed out.

essence concept

The concept at the "from" end of a definition arc with arc role http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/essence alias. Alias and essence concepts are definitionally equivalent in the sense that valid values for an alias concept are always valid values for essence concepts to which they are related by an essence-alias relationship.

essence item

An item in an instance whose element is an essence concept.

explicit dimension

Occurs when all the members are named.

See dimension and dimension member.

extended link

An extended link is an element identified as an extended link using the syntax defined in the XML Linking Language [XLINK]. Extended links represent a set of relationships between information that they contain and information contained in third party documents.

fact

Facts can be simple, in which case their values must be expressed as simple content (except in the case of simple facts whose values are expressed as a ratio), and facts can be compound, in which case their value is made up from other simple and/or compound facts. Simple facts are expressed using items (and are referred to as items in this specification) and compound facts are expressed using tuples (and are referred to as tuples in this specification).

implicit dimension

Occurs when the members are unknown or when the number of members is impractically large to enumerate explicitly.

See dimension, dimension member, and explicit dimension in this chart.

instance namespace

The namespace used for XBRL 2.1 instances, http://www.xbrl.org/2003/instance

item

An item is an element in the substitution group for the XBRL item element. It contains the value of the simple fact and a reference to the context (and unit for numeric items) needed to correctly interpret that fact. When items occur as children of a tuple, they must also be interpreted in light of the other items and tuples that are children of the same tuple. There are numeric items and non-numeric items, with numeric items being required to document their measurement accuracy and units of measurement.

least common ancestor

In an instance, the element that is an ancestor of two elements and has no child that also appears on the ancestor axis [XPATH] of those same two elements.

linkbase

A linkbase is a collection of XML Linking Language [XLINK] extended links that document the semantics of concepts in a taxonomy.

linkbase namespace

The namespace of XBRL 2.1 linkbases, http://www.xbrl.org/2003/linkbase

locator

Locators supply an XPointer [XPTR] reference to the taxonomy schema element definitions that uniquely identify each concept. They provide an anchor for extended link arcs.

measure

A measure is an XBRL fact whose context contains dimensions.

See dimension, concept, and fact in this chart.

MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, MAY, OPTIONAL

MUST/REQUIRED/SHALL/MUST NOT/SHALL NOT:

  • The definition is an absolute requirement of the specification.
  • The definition is an absolute prohibition of the specification.

SHOULD/RECOMMENDED: There may be valid reasons in particular circumstances to ignore a particular feature, but the full implications must be understood and carefully weighed before choosing a different course.

SHOULD NOT/NOT RECOMMENDED: There may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances when the particular behavior is acceptable or even useful, but the full implications should be understood and the case carefully weighed before implementing an behavior described with this label.

MAY/OPTIONAL: A feature is truly optional. One vendor may choose to include the feature because a particular marketplace requires it or because the vendor feels that it enhances the product while another vendor may omit the same feature.

non-numeric item

An item that is not a numeric item as defined below. Dates, in particular, are not numeric.

numeric item

An item whose simple content is derived by restriction from the XML Schema primitive types decimal, float or double, or complex content derived by restriction from the XBRL defined type fractionItemType

period

An instant or duration of time. In business reporting, financial numbers and other facts are reported "as of" an instant or for a period of certain duration. Facts about instants and durations are both common.

p-equal

Parent-equal: instance items or tuples having the same parent.

resource

Resources are XML fragments, contained within extended links that provide additional information about concepts or items.

root of an XBRL instance

The root of an XBRL instance is the xbrl element. In principle, it is possible to embed an XBRL instance in any XML document. In this case, the xbrl element is the container for the XBRL instance.

s-equal

Structure-equal: XML nodes that are either equal in the XML value space, or whose XBRL-relevant sub-elements and attributes are s-equal.

taxonomy

A taxonomy is an XML schema and the set of XBRL linkbases that it references using linkbaseRef elements and the linkbases that are nested within it.

taxonomy schema

A taxonomy schema is an XML Schema [SCHEMA 1]. A large part of many taxonomy schemas is given over to the definition of the syntax for the concepts in that taxonomy.

tuple

A tuple is an element in the substitution group for the XBRL tuple element. Tuples are used to bind together the parts of a compound fact. Those constituent parts are themselves, facts but they must be interpreted in light of each-other. For example, the name, age and compensation of a director of a company need to be grouped together to be correctly understood.

unit

Units are XML fragments that occur as children of the root element in XBRL instances. They document the unit of measure for numeric items. Each unit element is only capable of documenting a single unit of measurement.

u-equal

Unit-equal. u-equal numeric items having the same units of measurement.

v-equal

Value-equal: c-equal items having either the same non-numeric value, or numeric values that are equal within some tolerance defined by the lesser of their respective precision, implied precision or decimals attributes.

XBRL instance

XBRL instances are XML fragments with root element, xbrl. XBRL instances contain business report facts, with each fact corresponding to a concept defined in their supporting DTS. XBRL instances also contain contexts and units that provide additional information needed to interpret the facts in the instance.

x-equal

XPATH]-equal: The XPath "=" operator returns the value true.


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