Researcher's Blog | 2012

Example:

metadata

metadata is data about data (literally, since it is composed of Greek word meta and Latin term data, both meaning ‘information’); in XBRL it could be explained as a computer understandable information about business concepts; the accounting term Asset is very meaningful to a persons familiar with financial reporting, but has no meaning to a computer until it is told how to interpret it; these definitions appear in schemas and are enriched by linkbases (which inform computers about the relationships between elements and between the elements and other resources); together schemas and linkbases constitute taxonomies;

minOccurs attribute

the minOccurs attribute appears in XBRL mainly on element references in tuples; it indicates the minimum number of an element’s occurrences on the tuple; its value must be a positive integer and the default is “1″;

Example:

name attribute

a name attribute appears on the definitions of elements and attributes and assigns them with a unique name; it begins with a letter (or one of the punctuation characters from a specific set) and continues with letters, digits, hyphens, underscores, colons, or full ss which together are known as name characters; they must not begin with he string ‘xml’ (upper or lower case in any combination), since it is reserved for the XML standardization and specification;

namespace

an XML namespace is a collection of names, identified by a URI reference, which are used in XML documents as element types and attribute names; XML namespaces differ from the “namespaces” conventionally used in computing disciplines in that the XML version has an internal structure and is not, mathematically speaking, a set; the XML namespace attribute (xmlns) is placed in the start tag of an element (typically the root element e.g. or) and possesses the following syntax – xmlns:prefix=”namespaceURI”;

Examples:

xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema”

xmlns:xbrli=”http://www.xbrl.org/2003/instance”

xmlns:link=”http://www.xbrl.org/2003/linkbase”

xmlns:xlink=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink”

xmlns:ifrs=”http://xbrl.iasb.org/int/fr/ifrs/2005-05-15″

xmlns:ifrs-typ=”http://xbrl.iasb.org/int/fr/ifrs/2005-05-15/types”

targetNamespace=”http://xbrl.iasb.org/int/fr/ifrs/2005-05-15″

non-numeric item

a non-numeric item is an item that is not a numeric item, e.g. dates;

numeric item

a numeric item is an item whose content is derived by restriction of XML Schema types decimal, float or double, or has complex content derived by the restriction of the XBRL defined type fractionItemType; reported in an instance document it needs the reference to a unit;

parent-child relation

a parent-child relation concerns an arcrole value on the presentationArc element which is “http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/parent-child”; it is used to express hierarchical relations between concepts that appear in paper form business reports and stem from financial and accounting principles, rules and regulations;

period element

in XBRL, the term period relates to instant or duration time; in business reporting, financial facts are reported either “as of” a particular date (for example in Balance Sheet) or “for period” (i.e. for the time between two specified dates of which one begins the period and the other ends it); the period element constrains the instant or interval time for reference by an item element in instance documents; different periods are carried by different contexts; to reflect the business reporting idea of instant and duration, the period element may carry either a single instant element or a sequence of startDate and endDate elements or an element forever; the first three elements’ content must be a date TimeType (yyyy-mm-dd:Thh:mm:ss) or dateType (yyyy-mm-dd) while the last one is empty;

<xbrli:period>

<xbrli:startDate>2005-01-31</xbrli:startDate>

<xbrli:endDate>2005-12-31</xbrli:endDate>

</xbrli:period>

<xbrli:period>

<xbrli:instant>2005-12-31</xbrli:instant>

</xbrli:period>

periodType attribute

a periodType attribute appears on element elements in schemas; it must be used on items; it may be assigned one of the two values “instant” and “duration”; the first one indicates that the element, when used in an XBRL instance, must always be associated with a context in which the period is instant (that is, at the point of time); the later means that this period in instance documents must be expressed either using a sequence of startDate and endDate elements or an element forever;

precision attribute

a precision attribute appears on numeric items (facts) in instance documents; it conveys the arithmetic precision of a measurement and, therefore, the utility of that measurement to further calculations; it must be an integer or possess the value “INF” meaning that the number expressed is the exact value of the fact; the precision attribute must not occur together with the decimals attribute on the same fact element;

prefix

when declaring namespaces, they may be associated with prefixes which are used to qualify references to any schema components belonging to that namespace; prefixes, that precede names of elements, attributes and some of their predefined values, provide an indication of where to find definitions of these properties;

presentation linkbase

a presentation linkbase is a linkbase that contains hierarchical presentation relationships between concepts defined in the schemas it refers to; it includes extended links that contain locators of elements and arcs reflecting parent-child relations between them;

presentationArc element

the presentationArc is an XLink arc element; it is used in presentation linkbases to define hierarchical relations between concepts in terms of their appearance in business reports; one standard arcrole value defined for this element is “http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/parent-child”.

Example:

<presentationArc xlink:type=”arc” xlink:arcrole=”http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/parent-child”

xlink:from=”ifrs_Assets” xlink:to=”ifrs_AssetsCurrent” order=”1″ use=”optional”/>

reference element

a reference element appears on referenceLink extended links; it is intended to enable taxonomies to ground the definitions of concepts in authoritative statements in published business, financial and accounting literature; it should provide the information necessary to find the reference materials that are relevant to understanding appropriate usage of the concept being defined, but does not include the reference materials themselves; the reference element carries an arcrole attribute that describes the type of reference being defined (presentation, measurement, definition, etc…); it also contains a set of elements called parts (from their substitutionGroup which is “link:part”); because the structure of reference materials may differ, taxonomy creators are allowed to define their own parts; however, there is a predefined universal set of parts available (http://www.xbrl.org/2003/xbrl-linkbase-2003-12-31.xsd and http://www.xbrl.org/2004/ref-2004-08-10.xsd);

Examples:

<reference xlink:type=”resource” xlink:role=”http://www.xbrl.org/2003/role/presentationRef”

xlink:label=”CashFlowsFromUsedInOperationsTotal_ref”>

<ref:Name>IAS</ref:Name>

<ref:Number>7</ref:Number>

<ref:Paragraph>14</ref:Paragraph>

</reference>

<reference xlink:type=”resource” xlink:role=”http://www.xbrl.org/2003/role/measurementRef”

xlink:label=”CashFlowsFromUsedInOperationsTotal_ref”>

<ref:Name>IAS</ref:Name>

<ref:Number>7</ref:Number;>

<ref:Paragraph>18</ref:Paragraph>

<ref:Subparagraph>a</ref:Subparagraph&>

</reference>

reference linkbase

a reference linkbase is intended to contain relationships between concepts and references to authoritative statements in the published business, financial and accounting literature that give meaning to the concepts; it includes extended links referenceLink that contain locators of elements defined in schema, reference elements describing resources and arcs presenting concept-reference relations between them;

referenceArc element

a referenceArc is an XLink arc element; it connects concepts with reference resources; one standard arcrole value for this element is “http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/concept-reference”;

Example:

<referenceArc

xlink:type=”arc”

xlink:arcrole=”http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/concept-reference”

xlink:from=”AssetsTotalLocator” xlink:to=”AssetsTotal_LabelLocator” />

requires-element relation

a requires-element relation concerns arcrole value on a definitionArc element which is “http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/requires-element”; it is used to indicate elements required in business reports i.e. concepts that must appear in instance documents;

role attribute

a role is an XLink attribute that describes the meaning of resources within the context of a link; it may be used on extended- and simple- type elements as well as locators and resources; the value of role must be an absolute URI;

root element

a root element is the level element fulfilling the role of a container for a larger whole; in XBRL such elements could be schema, xbrl and linkbase;

schema document

a schema document contains definitions of concepts; together with linkbases which refer to it, it constitutes a taxonomy; a schema document should specify a target namespace; its root element is schema;

schema element

a schema element is the root element of schema document; it opens and closes every taxonomy schema; it specifies the target namespace and may assign prefixes to other namespaces used;

Example:

<schema xmlns=http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema xmlns:xbrli=http://www.xbrl.org/2003/instance xmlns:link=”http://www.xbrl.org/2003/linkbase”

xmlns:xlink=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink”

xmlns:ifrs=”http://xbrl.iasb.org/int/fr/ifrs/2005-05-15″

xmlns:ifrs-typ=”http://xbrl.iasb.org/int/fr/ifrs/2005-05-15/types”

targetNamespace=”http://xbrl.iasb.org/int/fr/ifrs/2005-05-15″

elementFormDefault=”qualified”

attributeFormDefault=”unqualified”>

<!– content – definitions –>

</schema>

schemaLocation attribute

a schemaLocation attribute is used in four circumstances:

* on an xbrl element in instance documents to provide indicators to the application regarding the location of schema documents against which the instance was created;

* on a linkbase element in linkbases to indicate the application the location of schema documents;

* (optional) on an import element in schema documents to provide hints to the application regarding the location of schema documents that the author warrants; there it supplies the required components for the namespace identified by the namespace attribute;

* (required) on an include element in schema documents it contains a URI reference which must identify a schema document; the effect is to compose a final effective schema by merging the declarations and definitions of the including and included schemas;

Example:

<xbrl xsi:schemaLocation=”http://xbrl.iasb.org/int/fr/ifrs/2005-05-15/proof

Proof-ifrs-2005-05-15.xsd”>

schemaRef element

a schemaRef element must appear in every instance document as a child of an xbrl element before other parts of an instance; it specifies the taxonomy schemas an instance belongs to.

segment element

a segment element appears on an entity element in a context definition; it is an optional container for additional tags defined by the instance preparer; it is intended to identify the business segment more completely in cases where the entity identifier is insufficient; in general, the content of a segment will be specific to the purpose of the XBRL instance; this element must not appear empty;

Example:

<my:stateProvince>MI</my:stateProvince>

</segment>

scenario element

a scenario is an optional element that appears in instance documents; it allows for additional information to be included in instances; the preparer of an instance defines the tags used to describe the information; this information shall enclose in particular the type of data reported (for example actual, budgeted, restated, pro forma, …)

‘shell’ schema

a ‘shell’ schema is produced by the ITMM tool; it refers to the IFRS Taxonomy by importing its schema and user-selected linkbases;

similar-tuples relation

a similar-tuples relation concerns arcrole value on definitionArc element which is “http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/similar-tuples”; it represents relationships between tuple concepts that have equivalent definitions; for example, this kind of relationship would be appropriate to use between two different tuple concepts that are both designed to describe mailing addresses;

substitutionGroup attribute

a substitutionGroup attribute appears on elements’ definitions in schemas; XBRL defines two basic substitution groups: items and tuples; its purpose is to indicate which type you can substitute with the actual definition;

summation-item relation

a summation-item relation concerns arcrole value on a calculationArc element which is “http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/summation-item”; it represents relationships only between concepts that are in the item substitutionGroup and whose type is numeric (e.g. monetary or decimal); the weight attribute defines the algebraic sign of the operation;

tag

mark-up languages such as XBRL use tags to describe data; for example <Asset>1000</Asset> – the word Asset together with the brackets “<” and “>” is called a tag; there are opening tags: <…> and closing tags: </…>.

taxonomy

taxonomy in general means a catalogue or a set of rules for classification; in XBRL, a taxonomy is a dictionary, containing computer-readable definitions of business reporting terms as well relationships between them and links connecting them to human-readable resources (metadata); a typical taxonomy consists of a schema (or schemas) and linkbases; a set of taxonomies that can be discovered from one entry point schema is called DTS;

taxonomy extension

taxonomy extensions add concepts and modify the relationships among the concepts in the base taxonomies that they extend; they are created to support specialised reporting requirements in specific accounting jurisdictions, in specific industries, or for specific companies; taxonomy extensions consist of a set of taxonomy schemas and/or linkbases that augment a DTS that includes the base taxonomies.

to attribute

to is a XLink attribute and appears on arcs; its value must be equal to the value of a label attribute of at least one locator or resource on the same extended link as the arc element itself; its value must be an XML NCName (i.e. it must begin with a letter or an underscore);

tuple

a “tuple” is one of two standard values of the substitutionGroup attribute on element element in an XBRL schema; elements possessing this value are often referred to as tuples; according to the XBRL Specification, tuples associate facts that cannot be independently understood and their meaning depends on their relationship to other elements; an example of such a set of facts is a payroll row which consists of the name of the employee, his/her position and salary; each of these elements does not have full meaning without being associated with the others; tuples are commonly used to express tables with known headings and an unknown number of rows; tuples do not carry any human-readable content; instead, they contain other elements; in XML, elements that contain other elements are said to have complex types; additionally, tuples do not possess any content other than their various elements so their complexContent restricts anyType only to the elements referred to; a tuple definition may also contain information on the number of minimum and maximum occurrences of elements possessed as well as their sequence;

<element ref=”ifrs:DescriptionOfElementReclassification”

minOccurs=”0″ maxOccurs=”1″/>

<element ref=”ifrs:CodeOfElementReclassification”

minOccurs=”0″ maxOccurs=”1″/>

<element ref=”ifrs:FinancialImpactOfReclassification”

minOccurs=”0″ maxOccurs=”1″/>

</sequence>

</restriction>

</complexContent>

</complexType>

</element>

type attribute

a type attribute may or must appear on different elements; from an XBRL perspective, the most important type attribute appears on concepts definitions in schema which indicate the data types of the described items; XBRL item types were derived from XML data types; the most common types used in financial reporting taxonomies are stringItemType that may contain any string of characters, monetaryItemType that is used in concepts for which there is a need to specify a currency and decimalItemType which is carried by other numeric items; taxonomy creators may create their own types as necessary to express financial information by extending or restricting the available XBRL or XML predefined types; a type attribute must also appear on XLink simple- and extended- links (in particular on schemaRef and linkbaseRef elements);

unit element

a unit is an element that appears in instance documents and specifies the units in which numeric items (that refer to its required id attribute using unitRef attribute) have been measured; it may define simple units using a measure element and complex units providing divide element and its subelements (unitNumerator and unitDenominator); there are several constraints imposed on this element, its children and their content; for example monetary concepts must refer to ISO 4217 currency codes;

Example Explanation

</unit> Currency, UK Pounds

<measure>xbrli:pure</measure>

</unit> Pure number (%, number of employees)

<measure>xbrli:shares</measure>

</unit> Number of shares

</unitNumerator>

<measure>xbrli:shares</measure>

</unitDenominator>

</divide>

</unit> EPS (Earnings Per Share) in Euros per share

URI reference

URI stands for Uniform Resource Identifier and is a compact string of characters used for identifying an abstract or physical resource; it appears in absolute or relative form; URI references are not allowed to contain characters such as all non-ASCII characters and excluded characters listed in IETF RFC 2396, except for number sign (#) and percent sign (%) and the square brackets; example: http://www.iasb.org/xbrl;

use attribute

use is an optional attribute that appears on arcs; its two possible values are “optional” and “prohibited”; “optional” is a default value (that is the value that the attribute is assigned when it is not specified) and represents a relationship that may participate in the network of relations defined in a DTS; “prohibited” indicates that the relationship does not exist; the use attribute is used by taxonomy extension creators to prohibit and override relations defined in linkbases of the base taxonomy;

versioning

the term versioning in XBRL relates to issues and problems that occur when implementing changes to an existing taxonomy; any changes to a taxonomy may particularly affect extensions that are based on it; versioning aims to help applications and people involved in taxonomy building and instance creation to tack these changes; first set of requirements concerning this issue was released by XBRL International on 1 October 2002; the second edition called the Taxonomy Life Cycle is at the stage of Internal Working Draft;

weight attribute

weight is a required attribute on calculationArc elements; it must have a non-zero decimal value; for summation-item arcs, the weight attribute indicates the multiplier to be applied to a numeric item value (content) when accumulating numeric values from item elements to summation elements; a value of “1.0″ means that 1.0 times the numeric value of the item is applied to the parent item; a weight of “-1.0″ means that 1.0 times the numeric value is subtracted from the summation item; there are also rules that are applied to the calculation of elements possessing opposite balance attribute values (‘credit’ and ‘debit’);

XBRL

XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language; it is an XML dialect developed for business and financial reporting purposes by a non-profit consortium XBRL International which has members from 400 companies and institutions that represent finance and IT sector organizations from all over the world; learn more from our Fundamentals of XBRL section or visit the XBRL International website;

xbrl element

an xbrl element is usually the root element of instance documents; in files, it serves as a container of data in XBRL format; first and foremost it contains an element that refers to the schema (schemaRef), provides contextual information (context and unit) for included facts and may provide them with footnotes (footnoteLink);

XBRL Specification

an XBRL Specification defines the rules and fundamentals of the language; it is designed to communicate information to IT professionals who develop applications and tools intended to be XBRL compatible and to a lesser extent is assists taxonomy creators; to find out more and obtain the latest version of the XBRL Specification visit XBRL International website;

XLink

XLink (XML Linking Language) is a language for creating hyperlinks in XML documents; it works in a similar way to the <a> element and its href attribute in HTML; to get access to its features there should be an XLink namespace declared usually at the of the document (“http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink”);

XML

XML stands for Extensible Markup Language; it was developed by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) to describe and carry data by allowing users to define their own tags (in contrast to HTML where the tags are predefined); this data (tags) is characterized using a Document Type Definition (DTD) or XML Schema which are self-descriptive;

xmlns attribute

an xmlns attribute is used to declare namespaces and their prefixes; in XBRL it is usually used on root or level elements (schema, linkbase, xbrl);

XML Schema

an XML Schema defines the structure and the content of the XML documents that refer to it, by defining, in particular, the elements and attributes and providing information about their type and possible content;

XPath

XPath was developed to help finding information in XML documents; it is mainly used in XSLT to navigate over elements and attributes; XPath provides a set of functions that allows specific actions to be performed on XML data;

XPointer

XPointer supports XLink by providing solutions to locate specific fragments of the XML document; its full name is XML Pointing Language; XBRL uses two specific XPointer schemes: the element pointer (works by counting) and the shorthand pointer(works by referencing to an id);

XSLT

XSLT stands for eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations and has been developed to facilitate conversions of XML documents into other XML documents or into other formats (e.g. XHTML); to perform these transformations, XSLT uses XPath expressions;