Altova StyleVision 2023 Enterprise Edition

XBRL

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About XBRL

XBRL is an XML language that is used for business reporting (see Wikipedia and xbrl.org for more information). An XBRL taxonomy is an XML Schema (.xsd document) that defines the structure of a financial report; an XBRL instance document (a .xml document) contains the data to be reported. One of the most commonly used XBRL taxonomies is US-GAAP, which is the basis of financial reports that US companies submit to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Internationally, it is the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) that is most commonly used.

 

One way to generate reports to submit to regulators (such as the SEC) is to transform an XBRL instance document (which contains the business or financial data) with an XSLT stylesheet to a suitable output format (such as HTML or text). In StyleVision, users can create an SPS based on an XBRL taxonomy. From the SPS, an HTML output document can be generated that contains the report to be submitted.

 

StyleVision's XBRL features

If an SPS is based on an XBRL taxonomy, then the taxonomy is displayed in a tree structure that is derived from the relationships in the presentation linkbase of the taxonomy. Users can then visually design the report to be created in the same way like they would design any other SPS: by dragging taxonomy components from the schema tree into the design.

 

While the manual creation of a design can be painstaking, the XBRL Table Wizard provides a quick and easy way to automatically create a report in table format. The structure and contents of the table can be customized, and the table can subsequently be edited in the design to add new table elements and specify formatting properties. Furthermore, if a taxonomy is extended from the US-GAAP taxonomy, tables can be automatically generated in line with best practices recommended for US-GAAP taxonomies.

 

About Inline XBRL

Often, regulators, such as the SEC, allow company reports to be submitted as (X)HTML documents that contain XBRL data. XBRL data that is contained in an (X)HTML document is known as Inline XBRL; it is stored in an Inline XBRL element. The advantage for companies is that the (X)HTML document contains both the XBRL data as well as the presentation information. This saves the company the trouble of generating a human-readable report from an XBRL instance document.

 

In StyleVision, you can include Inline XBRL templates in an SPS so that Inline XBRL elements are generated in output documents.

 

 

In this section

This section is organized into the following sub-sections:

 

Taxonomy Manager, which describes how to use the Taxonomy Manager tool to install, upgrade, and manage taxonomies for use with StyleVision.

Creating an XBRL SPS File describes how to start creating an XBRL SPS using the XBRL taxonomy as the starting point. Taxonomy Packages are also supported.

Taxonomy Structure explains the structure of the schema tree, which is the source of the taxonomy components that will be used for the SPS design, and Taxonomy Source Properties documents the various taxonomy property settings.

Taxonomy Source Properties describes the settings to define properties of the source taxonomy when used in an SPS.

XBRL Templates describes the various XBRL templates that can be inserted in the design.

Open, Closed, and Classic Modes describes these "modes", which determine whether the data is constrained, and the templates that can use these modes.

The XBRL Table Wizard shows how to use the XBRL Table Wizard.

US-GAAP Table Wizard describes the wizard for generating tables from the entries of a US-GAAP taxonomy's Presentation linkbase.

The XBRL Chart Wizard explains how chart representations of data in the XBRL file can be created.

Properties and Formatting explains how CSS styles are used for formatting XBRL tables and how you can use these styles.

Inline XBRL shows how content from the XBRL file can be output to an (X)HTML file as an Inline XBRL element.

Altova XBRL Extension Functions lists the XPath extension functions developed by Altova for use with XBRL in an SPS.

 

Useful inks

The XBRL International website is a good reference point for XBRL. The XBRL recommendations can also be accessed via the XBRL International website.

 

Altova website: AltovaWebLink XBRL Rendering

 

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