ProductsStyleVisionXBRL Rendering

Altova StyleVision® 2012 supports the creation of XSLT 1.0 / 2.0 stylesheets for rendering XBRL and XBRL Dimensions financial data into HTML, RTF, PDF, and Word 2007+ (OOXML).

Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is an XML-based markup language for electronic transmission of business and financial data. With a brand new mandate from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and official support from European Parliament as well as the governments of Japan and China, XBRL aims to reduce costs through the elimination of time consuming and error-prone human interaction. The introduction of XBRL tags allows computers to process information independently, thus increasing the speed of data integration and exchange, while at the same time virtually eliminating data redundancy and quality issues.

The unique StyleVision design interface allows you to visually design stylesheets to render XBRL data simultaneously in online or print format(s) for presentation. An intelligent XBRL Table Wizard and flexible table design makes it easy to customize the output structure and content of financial reports. This enables organizations to share customized business data with business partners, stakeholders, and regulatory commissions, all based on XBRL taxonomy requirements. In addition, using StyleVision to create reusable templates for rendering your financial data means that you do not have to rekey presentation reports every quarter and can eliminate the errors and time delays associated with manual data entry.

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XBRL Design for Rendering

To create a straightforward XBRL report, you 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 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, you can simply select US-GAAP mode (under Options in the screenshot above) to have StyleVision automatically render the data according to this information.

StyleVision lets you assign a sample XBRL instance to your taxonomy so that you can view the output rendered from your stylesheet at any stage in the design process. Here the XBRL data is rendered in HTML.

You can also preview the code automatically generated by StyleVision. The screenshot below reflects the XSLT HTML code.

XBRL Chart Wizard

StyleVision also lets you generate charts for XBRL reports via a comprehensive wizard. This adds a visualization dimension that lends clarity and advanced presentation to your financial and business data reports.

The following types of charts are available:

• 2D & 3D pie charts
• 2D & 3D bar charts
• Area charts
• Category line graphs
• Value line graphs
• Candlestick charts
• Gauge charts

To create an XBRL chart, simply drag a financial statement or other parent node to the design pane and choose Create XBRL Chart to invoke the XBRL Chart Wizard.

You can customize the data rendered in your charts simply by selecting the desired category or series values (Concept and Period are the defaults) in the properties dialog box. The screenshot below shows the Concept Properties dialog box, where you can select the XBRL concepts you wish to render in your charts.

The Period Properties dialog box allows you to filter by XBRL periods, which simply describe the length of time for which a particular concept is being reported (i.e., instant, duration, or forever), so that you can make meaningful comparisons.

Chart styles and properties can be controlled using the All settings button in the Chart Wizard and/or by using the StyleVision entry helper windows, where you can select chart type, background color, fonts, alignment, etc.

The example below shows XBRL data presented in tabular form and the same data presented as a chart in HTML. This data can be rendered instantly in RTF, PDF, or Word 2007+ simply by clicking the relevant output preview button.

Advanced Filtering with XPath

Because of the dimensional nature of XBRL data, it is often necessary to filter certain data out of presentation formats so that humans can more easily understand it or present it in different views.

StyleVision enables you to create user-defined templates for XBRL data and then use XPath, an XML language for addressing parts of an XML document, to filter that data. This adds flexibility and adaptability to your designs and allows you to easily render different views of your XBRL data, in much the same way as a Microsoft® Excel pivot table.

XPath filters are applied by right-clicking the XBRL template that you created and selecting Edit XPath Filter. This opens the XPath Builder where you can manually enter any valid predicated XPath expression or build one using entry-helpers and intelligent auto-completion capabilities.

Support for iXBRL

iXBRL, or Inline XBRL, is a standard for embedding XBRL fragments in an HTML document so that the same source can be used for both human and machine processing. HMRC, which provides XBRL oversight in the United Kingdom, has officially adopted iXBRL so this is a necessary feature for users that fall under that jurisdiction.

StyleVision supports iXBRL by allowing you to automatically generate iXBRL reports based on your XBRL instance files. Additional formatting options ensure that reports are displayed correctly.

The ability to render data from XBRL reports based on template designs makes StyleVision® 2012 the ideal tool for automating the publication of your financial data. Download a free 30-day trial of StyleVision.