|
|
| | XBRL Tools from Altova
What are XBRL Tools?Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is an XML-based vocabulary for electronic transmission of business and financial data. Currently in version 2.1, XBRL is an open standard that is maintained by XBRL International, a global non-profit consortium of over 550 major companies, organizations, and government agencies. XBRL International now includes 23 jurisdictions in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, North and South America, and Australia. XBRL was developed to facilitate business intelligence (BI) automation by enabling machine-to-machine communication and data processing for financial information with an eye towards cost reduction through the elimination of time consuming and error-prone human interaction. Official support from European Parliament and a mandate from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has all but secured XBRL’s future as the official standard for financial reporting. Drawing upon the power and flexibility of the XML family of standards, XBRL utilizes familiar W3C specifications such as XML Namespaces, XML Schema, XPath, and XLink to offer a growing set of taxonomies for defining semantics, syntax, and relationships for single source financial reporting, helping to overcome data redundancy and quality issues in addition to offering instantaneous delivery to a variety of different output formats. XBRL incorporates these technologies to describe a taxonomy document and an instance document, which together comprise a business report. The fact that understanding the complexities of XBRL financial reporting may seem daunting to non-technical business users may come as no surprise, but learning XBRL may also be a hurdle for many technical users (developers, software architects, IT, etc.) who may have no knowledge of the intricacies of financial reporting. XBRL, of course, is XML, and it has taken full advantage of all of the extensibility that XML has to offer to add a sophisticated set of features for handling metadata, business rules, content validation, expressing relations, advanced computations, and dimensional data. Altova has extended the reach of its XML development tools with support for XBRL, giving financial institutions the ability to comply with current and future regulations using the affordable tools that they are already comfortable with. XBRL ToolsAll of the power and functionality that XBRL brings to financial data is useless without XBRL-conformant tools to interpret and process this data. In fact, understanding the importance of tools for XBRL, the XBRL recommendation writes software vendors into its abstract: XBRL allows software vendors, programmers, intermediaries in the preparation and distribution process and end users who adopt it as a specification to enhance the creation, exchange, and comparison of business reporting information. As such, XBRL development and data integration can be supported in a variety of different ways. XBRL Taxonomy Creation ToolsAdding to its powerful functionality as an award-winning XML editor, XMLSpy® 2010 now provides support for XBRL taxonomy creation with an integrated XBRL Taxonomy Editor. The XMLSpy Taxonomy Editor gives XBRL users access the same powerful viewing and editing capabilities that are available for XML including intelligent XML editing and entry helpers that guide data input based on the structural information provided in the XBRL instance and base taxonomies, as well as a find and sort feature that makes navigating complex XBRL files much faster and easier.
The XMLSpy XBRL Taxonomy Wizard makes it even easier to extend XBRL taxonomies. The wizard guides you through setting up and loading your taxonomy (XML Schema and XLink) files into XMLSpy through a series of intuitive dialog windows, then displays your selections in XBRL view, where you can continue editing and refining the taxonomy in a graphical manner. XBRL Validation ToolsIn addition to its powerful capabilities as an XBRL taxonomy creation and editing tool, XMLSpy can be used to validate both XBRL taxonomies and XBRL instance files to ensure truly accurate and compliant financial reporting. Standard XML editors are not sufficient for working with XBRL because they cannot process the normalization and semantic properties that XBRL adds to the XML specification. The added XBRL functionality in XMLSpy makes it the only fully featured XML editor on the market with the capacity to understand the multiple relations and content validation that makes XBRL such a powerful language for explicit and transparent financial reporting. AltovaXML®, Altova's free XML processor that provides the validation component in XMLSpy, can also be used by developers as a standalone component or for integrating in enterprise XBRL reporting workflows. It also provides the validation component for all of the XML tools in the MissionKit, meaning that this capability also extends to MapForce and StyleVision. XBRL DocumentationXMLSpy includes a feature for generating XBRL documentation in HTML, RTF, or Microsoft® Word. This enables teams to work more closely together in creating XBRL taxonomies and instance files. Users can also print the graphical representation of an XBRL taxonomy as it appears in XMLSpy's XBRL view. XBRL Data Exchange/Integration ToolsMapForce® 2010 is an any-to-any graphical data mapping and integration tool with support for transforming XML, databases, flat files, EDI, Excel 2007+, Web services, and now XBRL, into other data formats and/or structures. This enables XBRL users to extract data directly from backend systems and convert it into fully compliant XBRL instance documents, or transform XBRL data received for repurposing in any number of ways. These conversions can be run on a one-time basis of automated through code generation in Java, C#, or C++. MapForce transformations can also be automated via the Command Line. This makes public financial data submission a repeatable and highly manageable process, allowing organizations to produce valid XBRL reports as required based on the variable data stored in accounting system fields. XBRL taxonomies are inserted as the target or source of any mapping by referencing the taxonomy schema or an existing XBRL instance file. The XBRL component is represented in a hierarchical structure, clearly defining the root element, link roles, hypercubes, dimensions, context, concepts, and facts defined by the taxonomy. In addition to giving users the ability to run one-time conversions based on graphical mapping designs, MapForce can autogenerate program code in Java, C#, or C++. This means that organizations can streamline tasks by automating their periodic XBRL financial reporting workflows. The generated code can be used to create and deploy automated transformations from accounting systems to XBRL, greatly reducing quarterly data preparation times. This enables companies to take full advantage of the efficiencies and money saving opportunities that XBRL and accounting automation provide. MapForce can also be automated through the command line. XBRL Data Analysis ToolsAltova MapForce® 2010 supports aggregating XBRL data from multiple sources, making it easy to simultaneously export data from multiple XBRL reports for analysis in any medium. Mapping data directly from its source format removes the need for re-keying and potential errors. Together, MapForce and XBRL enable the automation of the multi-dimensional financial analysis that organizations and stakeholders use to evaluate market, company, and industry performance on a regular basis. XBRL Rendering ToolsStyleVision® 2010 is a graphical stylesheet designer for rendering output in HTML, RTF, PDF, and Word 2007+ (OOXML) based on XML, databases, and now XBRL taxonomies To create a straightforward XBRL report, users simply drag and drop a taxonomy financial statement onto the design pane as an XBRL table and then use StyleVision's graphical interface to format stylesheets for simultaneous output in HTML, RTF, PDF, and Word 2007+ (OOXML). The XBRL Table Wizard makes it easy to customize the table structure and specify the concepts to include in the report. In the case of the US-GAAP taxonomy, which provides, in addition to the hierarchical organization in its presentation linkbase, some best practices information on how to structure XBRL instances, users can simply select US-GAAP mode (see above) to have StyleVision automatically output the data according to this information. A sample XBRL instance file can be assigned to the taxonomy so that the progression of the design can be viewed on-the-fly by clicking the preview buttons at the bottom of the screen. Users can also view the corresponding XSLT 1.0, XSLT 2.0, or XSL:FO code that creates these renderings at any time. The XSLT and XSL:FO-powered publishing templates autogenerated by StyleVision can be incorporated into highly automated financial reporting workflows to create a repeatable process. Because the overall structure of an organization's XBRL reports are likely to remain the same, XBRL financial statements can be automatically output in HTML, PDF, and Word at any time based on the original stylesheet design and the updated financial data. StyleVision gives XBRL users the ability to access the separation of structure and presentation that the XML specification provides.
| |
| | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Company | Legal | Press | Partners | Careers | Sitemap | Contact Us | Altova Blog | |||
|
Get the latest Altova announcements, learn about new product features, read tech tips and industry info at the 