Great post today on the US Governement migrating to the Cloud  by Vivek Kundra is U.S. Chief Information Officer on http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/05/13/moving-cloud

"Today, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board announced that it is moving Recovery.gov to the cloud. As the world’s largest consumer of information technology and as stewards of taxpayer dollars, the Federal Government has a duty to be a leader in pioneering the use of new technologies that are more efficient and economical.

For those of you not familiar with cloud computing, here is a brief explanation. There was a time when every household, town, or village had its own water well. Today, shared public utilities give us access to clean water by simply turning on the tap. Cloud computing works a lot like our shared public utilities. However, instead of water coming from a tap, users access computing power from a pool of shared resources. Just like the tap in your kitchen, cloud computing services can be turned on or off as needed, and, when the tap isn’t on, not only can the water be used by someone else, but you aren’t paying for resources that you don’t use.  Cloud computing is a new model for delivering computing resources – such as networks, servers, storage, or software applications.

Recovery.gov is the first government-wide system to move to the cloud. The move is part of the Administration’s overall efforts to cut waste and fix or end government programs that don’t work. By migrating to the public cloud, the Recovery Board is in position to leverage many advantages including the ability keep the site up as millions of Americans help report potential fraud, waste, and abuse. The Board expects savings of about $750,000 during its current budget cycle and significantly more savings in the long-term.

Read full post at http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/05/13/moving-cloud

By now, you are all probably all well aware of the recent SEC proposal  proposing to require that most ABS issuers file a python computer program that gives effect to the flow of funds, or “waterfall,” provisions of the transaction. Perhaps wondering why Python? What drove the SEC to chose Python, over other dynamic languages (PERL,Ruby, or purpose-specific language like Haskell or why not Java, C++? Perhaps it's because Python is already extensively used is quantitative finance applications; there is already a good body of work in Financial Modeling that leverages Python and a good supply of python-saavy quants primed and ready to do the modeling.

A good book to get you started understanding how Python is applied to the financial modeling is Financial Modeling in Python by Shayne Fletcher, Christopher GardnerFletcher and Gardner have created a comprehensive resource that will be of interest not only to those working in the field of finance, but also to those using numerical methods in other fields such as engineering, physics, and actuarial mathematics. By showing how to combine the high-level elegance, accessibility, and flexibility of Python, with the low-level computational efficiency of C++, in the context of interesting financial modeling problems, they have provided an implementation template which will be useful to others seeking to jointly optimize the use of computational and human resources. They document all the necessary technical details required in order to make external numerical libraries available from within Python, and they contribute a useful library of their own, which will significantly reduce the start-up costs involved in building financial models. This book is a must read for all those with a need to apply numerical methods in the valuation of financial claims.”

And then for a deeper dive, Learning Python by Mark Lutz, 4th Edition is a fantastic book and will help you get familiar with the language. His other book, "Programming Python" is more application specific.

For a reliable, stable distribution of Python,  I'd recommend ActiveState's ActivePython Business Edition and taking a look at the ActiveState repository of recipes. The key will be learning the SciPy and NumPy libraries. Try downloading IPython, it's an interactive Python shell - extremely useful for all sorts of reasons. 

And one more thing, think about applying some decent style guide when you do start coding like Google's StyleGuide for Python - because readable code helps everyone!  

(Linux Magazine - Trevan McGee)
Waterfall program would require investors to annotate assets, export in XML.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published a 667-page proposal that, among other things, outlined the implementation and use of a Python program that would annotate asset-backed securities, allowing potential investors to have periodic access to an ABS's pool asset performance, which include the interest rate, level of prepayments, defaults and losses-given-defaults.

The Waterfall computer program, as it's called in the proposal, would provide potential investors with detailed information about an ABS. In doing so, the program would effectively reduce (but not eliminate) an investor's dependency on third-party analysis by providing updated information typically available only in the prospectus.

"By running the waterfall computer program in combination with other internally-developed or commercially available vendor interest rate, prepayment, default and loss-given-default models, cash flow engines, or computational services, investors should be able to promptly run cash flow simulations and generate present value estimates for ABS tranches," the proposal states.

The proposal requires that an asset data file be created every time an ABS and final prospectus is registered. The asset data file is then uploaded to the Electronic Data-Gathering, Anaylysis and Retrieval (EDGAR) system, the SEC's public database. Potential investors or the curious public can download the file and view it within The Waterfall computer program. Investors also can input their own predictions regarding pool asset performance.

Credit card master trusts would also be required to use the Waterfall computer program anytime an unplanned event affecting investors occurred.

The SEC chose Python specifically because it is open source and available freely to anyone. Its status as an interpreted language is also in line with the SEC's rule to keep executable code off of EDGAR for security reasons.

The SEC is not opposed to collaboration between the Waterfall program and other investment software, as long as users disclose, via a separately filed exhibit, the functionality.

http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/SEC-Proposal-Use-Python-to-Enforce-Wall-Street-Transparency)

XBRL US, a non-profit advancing open standards for XML business reporting in the U.S.,  today annouced the  launch of  their XBRL Consistency Suite, a set of online XBRL tools developed by XBRL US Labs to help public companies identify inconsistencies in their XBRL documents.  The tool runs thousands of checks against an instance document and produces a report showing inconsistencies related to the use of the XBRL US GAAP Taxonomy so that companies can make corrections before their final SEC submission. The checks will be updated each quarter and are designed to help companies create more consistent, high quality XBRL data.  The tool also includes access to a database of XBRL documents that are updated regularly throughout the day and let companies identify concepts used and extensions created for all XBRL submissions, for their industry and individual peers.  Dues-paying membershave automatically have access to the XBRL documents database right now – access it through the members-only section of www.xbrl.us.

XBRL Consistency Suite will be sold direct to public company preparers but can also be integrated into third party XBRL software and services.  The XBRL Consistency Suite costs  $4,000 per CIK.  Consistency Checks can be integrated with third party software and services and XBRL US Labs is working with leading XBRL providers to integrate XBRL Consistency Checks into their products.  The first of these third party tools is now available for an additional $1,000, and it includes SEC and XBRL validation software with the Consistency Checks in a single tool to maximize ease of use. There is special pricing available for XBRL US members.

In the over 1,400 XBRL financial statements that have been submitted to date, thousands of errors have been identified, including incorrect use of signs, missing XBRL-tagged elements, and tags that should not have been reported, among others.

The XBRL Consistency Suite (http://csuite.xbrl.us) performs over 6,000 tests against a company's XBRL document and produces a report that shows taxonomy-specific errors that have been made.  Companies, or their service providers, should run the tool on their XBRL-formatted financials before they submit them to regulators and investors as a final step in the XBRL creation process.  It also includes access to a database of XBRL documents submitted to the SEC, updated regularly. 

Subscribers can perform basic analytics on the database to see what concepts are being used by their peers and what extensions are being created by searching on the full set of filings, or searching by industry or company.  Pre-created extensions reflect new accounting standards and industry changes.  XBRL Consistency Suite was developed by XBRL US Labs, the research and development arm of XBRL US.

"Creating XBRL-formatted financial statements requires a good understanding of how the XBRL US GAAP Taxonomy is structured.  Consistency Checks lets us test our assumptions and make corrections to errors that can be easily avoided, before we submit the XBRL document to the SEC," said Matt Birney, Manager, IFRS Policy and Implementation, United Technologies Corporation, "And the company analytics give us real insights into industry best practices about how our peers tag their financials."

"Public companies have a lot of decisions to make when using the XBRL US GAAP Taxonomy," said Campbell Pryde, Chief Standards Officer, XBRL US, "They should not be penalized for mistakes that can be easily corrected.  The XBRL Consistency Suite gives companies the tools they need to correct inaccuracies.  Our goal is to help companies and industries establish a common core set of best practices so that investors and regulators get the information they need."

For more information, download a white paper at http://xbrl.us/research/documents/AvoidingErrorsWhitePaper.pdf outlining the kinds of common errors that have been identified, visit our web page at http://xbrl.us/csuite and view a demonstration of the XBRL Consistency Suite, http://xbrl.us/media/csuitedemoshort.wmv

XBRL US also conducts in-person training and online webinars geared to help companies increase the efficiencies in XBRL preparation and submission, including detailed footnote tagging.  To learn more, visit http://xbrl.us/webinars for webinars and http://xbrl.us/training for training sessions.

About XBRL US

XBRL US is the non-profit consortium for XML business reporting standards in the United States and is a jurisdiction of XBRL International. It represents the business information supply chain, including accounting firms, software companies, financial databases, printers and government agencies. Its mission is to support the implementation of XML business reporting standards through the development of taxonomies for use by US public and private sectors, with a goal of interoperability between sectors, and by promoting XBRL adoption through the collaboration of the business reporting supply chain. XBRL US has developed taxonomies for U.S. GAAP and mutual fund reporting under contract with the Securities and Exchange Commission.  XBRL US Labs, the research and development arm of XBRL US, leverages the XBRL US platform, methodologies and people to address the quality of taxonomies and the harmonization of XBRL with other XML standards with the goal of enabling faster XBRL adoption.  

Links:  www.xbrl.us

Tim Berners-Lee will head up the newly created Institute fo Web Science to push web 3.0 technologies. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has pledged £30m to fund the Institute which will look at ways of commercialising semantic web technologies.  Brown said: "This next generation web is a simple concept, but I believe it has the potential to be just as revolutionary - just as disruptive to existing business and organisational models - as the web was itself, moving us from a web of managing documents and files to a web of managing data and information - and thus opening up the possibility of bypassing current digital bottlenecks and getting direct answers to direct requests for data and information."  The institute, which will also research the development and commercialisation of other next-generation web technologies, will be jointly based in the universities of Oxford and Southampton.  The centre - which will be run by world wide web creator Tim Berners-Lee and web science expert professor Nigel Shadbolt - will research how the private sector could use tagged data to spot new business opportunities - such as better identifying areas of customer demand - and increase efficiencies within organisations, through semantic technologies such as XBRL.

For more details see article at http://www.silicon.com/management/public-sector/2010/03/22/gordon-brown-spends-30m-to-plug-britain-into-semantic-web-39745620/

One on One with Diane Mueller, XBRL expert at Just Systems  By Ron Miller

Diane Mueller is vice president of XBRL development at JustSystems. She has been actively involved in the development of the XBRL standard including acting as the Canadian representative to the XBRL International Steering Committee. She serves as Vice Chair of that body, and chairs the XBRL Working Groups on Rendering and Software Interoperability.

We asked her about XBRL and why it's so important.

FCM: Explain XBRL in a nutshell for our readers?

DM: In a nutshell, Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) makes financial information more accessible and easier to use through the application of XML. XBRL is one of a family of "XML" languages which has become the standard means of communicating information between businesses, regulators and investors across the Internet. The goal of XBRL is to enhance the exchange of corporate financial information by making it more comparable, consistent and accessible across the web. You could think of XBRL as the "grammar and syntax" for describing financial information. With XBRL, various regulators, domain experts and regional authorities have developed XBRL dictionaries (known as "taxonomies") based on regional and global accounting standards such as the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), the U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) or the U.K. GAAP to describe the specific financial terms and their relationship to one another based on specific domain areas. For example, one can look at how "Mutual Fund Disclosures" pertain to specific regions such as the United States of United Kingdom. The idea is simple--instead of treating financial information as a block of text, it provides an identifying tag for each individual item of data. By supplying these terms in a computer-readable manner, consuming applications can easily and accurately parse and analyze the information.

Read more: http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/story/one-one-diane-mueller-xbrl-expert-just-systems/2009-09-30#ixzz0SzklRfH3

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FCM: How is using XBRL better than the old way of submitting financial information to the SEC?
 
DM: When financial content is supplied as XBRL, consumers can automatically extract and analyze the information in financial documents and know that they are interpreting the facts accurately. Without XBRL, such information had to be painstakingly mapped and extracted from a variety of sources in a process that was often normalized, prone to human error in the interpretation and often costly. The SEC has the onerous task of insuring the accuracy of all corporate submissions in a timely fashion. XBRL enables the SEC to automate the validation of the content in the submissions, apply a battery of automated tests that cull out the usual human errors and common mistakes in submissions, and apply their own risk tests. This saves the time and energy of reviewers by supplying a more needle-rich haystack to look through for other, more ominous forms of fraud and malfeasances.
 
FCM: How did the XBRL XML standard develop?
 
DM: XBRL represents a unique technology collaboration of organizations across the financial information supply chain, and the diversity of these organizations perhaps accounts for the successful and rapid adoption of XBRL. From the beginning, the effort has been inclusive of a wide range of perspectives. Starting with small group of evangelists back in 1998, the effort grew to include accounting firms, accounting organizations, regulators, software vendors and XML experts from over 550 companies and agencies worldwide that continue work together to build the XBRL specification and promote and support its global adoption under the auspices of XBRL International (www.xbrl.org).  
 
FCM: What uses does the language have beyond helping the SEC process information faster?
 
DM: Beyond its use in financial statements like those found in U.S. SEC filings, XBRL is being applied around the globe in a number of other areas such as tax reporting, sustainability reporting, statistical reporting, and other financial and non-financial business metrics.  We are seeing XBRL incorporated into various other federal, state and municipal financial reporting projects in an effort to modernize intra-governmental reporting. This is not to say that XBRL is the panacea for all business reporting, but by supplying a standard that can be harmonized and mapped to other XML standards such as NIEM, RIXML, or NEWSml, financial content found in XBRL-tagged documents can more easily be mashed up and searched. This enables a wider range of inquiry and discovery of new relationships in the massive amount of financial and business information that is rapidly becoming available on the web.

FCM: What kind of products are developing around XBRL to make it more usable for organizations?
 
DM: There are many of XBRL-enhanced products and services available today. They range from simple, helper tools for creating XBRL-tagged financial reports to entire XBRL data reporting platforms that enable the collection and aggregation of XBRL documents to desktop applications that allow the consumption of XBRL content for the creation of research reports and audit findings. There are web services available that enable you to subscribe to XBRL-enhanced data feeds, and the U.S. SEC even supplies its own RSS feed to U.S. SEC filings with XBRL content. While XBRL allows for more accurate consumption and interpretation of financial information, there is still a need to connect to the authentic source of the document and to recombine the XBRL content with other data sources. That said, I see a new genre of products on the horizon that will enable consumers to leverage social networking, mash-up and semantic technologies to communicate and share financial information more effectively and rapidly across the web with implications for the fluidity and transparency of the capital markets.

On September 4th, the President took another important step toward a more open and transparent government by announcing a new policy to voluntarily disclose White House visitor access records. Aside from a small group of appointments that cannot be disclosed because of their necessarily confidential nature, the record of every visitor who comes to the White House for an appointment, a tour or to conduct business will be released. As historic as the President’s announcement is, it is also a good illustration of what is missing from the administration’s technology infrastructure plan — a coordinated approach to providing data standards.

On the surface, this new disclosure of visitor data looks perfectly fine. The data made available in a simple Comma Separated Values (.csv) file is easily downloaded and opened into a spreadsheet for viewing purposes.

Take a step beyond simple viewing, and try to mash up this content to see where the visitor’s list collides with other interest groups and data sources — you begin to get an idea of the complex nature of data mapping. For example, think of mashing up this visitor information with the U.S. SEC filings that include the names and remuneration of executives of publicly traded companies tagged in XBRL.

Better yet, simply try to blog about someone’s visit to the White House and reference a snippet from the .csv content. Then go to Twitter and post a tweet with a link to your blog so you can have bragging rights about being the first to notice some VIP’s visit. If I then repost the information on my blog and one of my readers wants to get back to the source file to verify the facts without some form of metadata and URI associated with the content, there is no path back to the original source. Therefore, there is no validation that the information is accurate. When I repost your information on my blog, I am simply trusting your cutting and pasting skills and trusting that you accurately interpreted the information. This can be a potentially dangerous situation that often leads to a lot of misinformed “noise.”

So far, in the marriage of social networks and open government, there has been a lot of “noise” coming in, but there has been very little done in the way of creating constructive solutions for accurate and trusted citizen participation.

Without the metadata about the newly disclosed visitor content or any other government information, the accuracy with which data is interpreted is jeopardized with each reuse. Without a link back to the source, the authenticity of the content is no longer discoverable. Without this information, it’s all just more “noise” on the web.

Where Does XML Fit in?

XML industry standards bring metadata to the content. Even a simple XML schema and an instance document would have gone a long way to ensure that, regardless of what tool consumed the visitor data (including spreadsheets), the information would always be interpreted in the same manner. Furthermore, the use of an XML industry standard for identity would enable one to leverage existing tools to mash up the content with other data sources. The key benefit of XML is that consuming applications no longer requires someone to reinvent clever ways of mapping and representing complex data, so developers can expend their energies on solving higher level problems that have a greater return.

There are plenty of other examples across federal, state and municipal government agencies that build the case for leveraging XML industry standards to aid in creating greater transparency and to create efficiencies for the agencies themselves.

Where Do We Go from Here?

Recovery.gov and multiple other individual government agency projects have taken strides forward to granting the public access to government data. However, cross-agency conversations are still taking place to get some agreement on common data models for comparing and mashing up information from multiple data sources accurately.

Efforts such as the NIEM XBRL harmonization discussions should be applauded as this combined effort should aid in the accurate mapping of government financial data across agencies. There is still a long way to go before we can start to leverage the really interesting technologies like Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Semantic Web.

While everyone wants to jump on the Web 2.0 bandwagon, designing the technology infrastructure to ensure that it is done in an open, transparent and accurate manner requires a lot of cross-agency collaboration. The administration’s goal should be to ensure that the public can collaborate on the analysis and dissemination of public information across the web in a manner that can be trusted, authenticated and redistributed without imposing a cost burden on the consumers or the producers of that information. That is no small task.

This all leaves me wondering if I am guessing correctly about what was being talked about in the White House on 7/14/2009 at 3:00:00PM and about who was in the room. If my assumptions are right — loosely based on about 22,200 Google hits for Stephen J. Hemsley, who was listed as visiting Aneesh Chopra, for whom there are about 1,170,000 Google hits — I’m guessing a lot of these same data topics were addressed with a slight healthcare twist. But then again, I’m doing the interpretations here and making the free associations, so you’ll just have to trust me.

To add your input to the conversation about improving data access on the web, join us at the Workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on the Web on October 5-6, 2009, in Arlington, VA, that is co-organized by W3C and XBRL International, Inc. and hosted by the FDIC.

 ###

About the Author

Diane Mueller has been actively involved in the development efforts of the XBRL standard for the past decade. She is the Canadian representative to the XBRL International Steering Committee, serves as vice chair of that body, and chairs the XBRL Working Groups on Rendering and Software Interoperability. She currently serves as vice president of XBRL development at JustSystems, the largest independent software vendor in Japan and a worldwide leader in XML and information management technologies. Learn more about JustSystems at http://na.justsystems.com/XBRL.  You may also follow her on Twitter at @XBRLspy.

 About JustSystems and XBRL

Along with the SEC, the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) Foundation, XBRL International, and many other organizations worldwide, JustSystems has been aggressively supporting the development of the XBRL standard and integrating the interactive data format into its xfy platform. JustSystems’ software solutions work with XBRL to enable a richer way of working with and utilizing information, leveraging our technology around information search and retrieval, semantics, document management, and data integration. To learn more about our products for accelerating the creation, quality and consistency of the financial content that your organization produces and consumes today, please visit http://na.justsystems.com/xfyXBRLReport.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- XBRL US, the XML standard setter for business information reporting, announced today that its Chief Standards Officer, Campbell Pryde, will present at the NIEM (National Information Exchange Model), National Training Event in Baltimore, Maryland on September 30, 2009, which will focus on guidance, resources and tools to aid in the exchange of information for government reporting.

NIEM is the XML-based information exchange framework for U.S. government agencies and organizations, and XBRL US is the XML standard setter for business information reporting in the U.S.  NIEM and XBRL are open, free standards with significant adoption momentum and proven applications.  The two organizations also announced an initiative to investigate how to leverage the strengths of both standards towards better government reporting.  Representatives from NIEM spoke at the XBRL US Board of Directors meeting on August 25, 2009 to discuss the topic of closer harmonization of the complementary standards.

NIEM focuses on standardizing transaction exchanges of non-financial elements used across all levels of government.  XBRL US’ digital dictionary contains elements for financial data reporting that are currently used by U.S. public companies to report US GAAP financial statements.  Leveraging the strengths of both standards is expected to result in greater transparency, accuracy and consistency in government reporting.

“XBRL has successfully provided the technology infrastructure for data standards like US GAAP and is starting work to incorporate the ISO 20022 standard for corporate actions announcements.  Working with the accepted NIEM government information exchange standard is a logical extension of that model,” said Campbell Pryde, XBRL US, “I look forward to a mutual exchange of information with NIEM members at the training event and going forward.”

NIEM was established by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security in collaboration with organizations across all levels of government to effectively and efficiently share critical information at key decision points throughout the justice, public safety, emergency and disaster management, intelligence and homeland security enterprise.  NIEM is designed to develop, disseminate, and support enterprise-wide information exchange standards and processes to enable jurisdictions to automate information sharing.

“NIEM helps government agencies connect and speak the same language concerning non-financial, business information.  XBRL provides not only the financial statement standard, but also the technology infrastructure to optimize transport and increase the accuracy of the information.  We look forward to Campbell bringing that message to our members so that we can begin a real dialogue between the two organizations,” said Donna Roy, Executive Director, NIEM.

To register for the NIEM National Training Event, go to https://www.iir.com/registration/niem/registration.cfm .

About XBRL

XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) is a royalty-free, open specification for software that uses XML data tags to describe business and financial information for public and private companies and other organizations. XBRL benefits all members of the information supply chain by utilizing a standards-based method with which users can prepare, publish in a variety of formats, exchange and analyze business and financial statements and the information they contain.  To learn more about XBRL, visit http://www.xbrl.org

XBRL US is the nonprofit consortium for XML business reporting standards and is responsible for bringing together a cross-industry effort to convert US GAAP accounting requirements and common practices into a standard digital dictionary for more transparent reporting by publicly-traded companies.  The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has mandated the use of XBRL for public company, mutual funds and credit rating agency reporting.

The US SEC has now officially posted the 2009 XBRL US GAAP Taxonomy for use by preparers. An up-to-date listing of al the available XBRL schemas and linkbases of standard taxonomies that are supported by EDGAR can be found at http://www.sec.gov/info/edgar/edgartaxonomies.shtml . The choice of standard taxonomies is affected by whether or not the company is submitting interactive data under the Voluntary Filer Program (VFP) and whether or not the entity is a corporate filer.

A Voluntary Filing Program (VFP) was started by the Commission in 2005 allowing corporate filers and investment companies to voluntarily submit XBRL-Related Documents as Exhibit 100.

In 2009, the Commission adopted rules requiring these entities to submit Interactive Data as Exhibit 101 on a phased-in or time-delayed basis for certain EDGAR form types. Corporate Filers Rule Release No. 33-9002, "Interactive Data to Improve Financial Reporting," details Interactive Data submission requirements and phase-in schedules for certain Exchange Act and Securities Act filings, beginning in mid 2009.

Companies covered under this Rule submit Interactive Data as Exhibit 101 (attachment type EX-101) and use the taxonomies applicable , and they may choose to submit their Interactive Data before their scheduled phase-in.

For more information, please visit http://www.sec.gov/info/edgar/edgartaxonomies.shtml

W3C invites people to participate in a Workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on the Web on 5-6 October 2009 in Arlington, Virginia (USA). Workshop participants will discuss how to achieve greater transparency and more efficient reporting and analysis of business and financial data for companies and governments. The Workshop is jointly organized by W3C and XBRL International, with hosting support from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The extensible business reporting language (XBRL), is being widely adopted all around the world, and is set to become the standard way of recording, storing and transmitting business financial information. While effort on XBRL so far has gone into developing the standards and taxonomies of reporting concepts, comparatively little effort has been spent on how to exploit the expected flood of data.

The goal of the Workshop is to identify opportunities, use cases, and challenges for interactive access to financial data expressed in XBRL and related languages, and the broader opportunities for using Semantic Web technologies. The Workshop is free of charge and open to anyone, subject to review of their statement of interest and space availability. Statements of interest (position papers) are due 21 August. See the call for participation for more information. Learn more about the Semantic Web. (Permalink)

In-depth case studies and practical hands-on sessions will be featured

WASHINGTON,DC , June July 13 – XBRL US, the nonprofit consortium for XML business reporting, will host its first annual Pacific Rim Technology Workshop at Hitachi Data Systems Headquarters in Santa Clara, California on July 28-30, 2009. The objective of the 2 ½ day workshop is to bring together XML and XBRL developers, and product managers to share ideas and discuss possible solutions to issues in development. Participants in the workshop will attend hands-on sessions and open discussion groups covering topics such as maintenance, development, and change management, among others.

“XBRL has the potential to transform the world of business reporting, and we are dedicated to continuing to drive the standard forward,” said Diane Mueller, BOD member of XBRL International, Inc. and vice president, XBRL development for JustSystems. “XBRL improves transparency and accuracy of financial information – letting key stakeholders make better business decisions. Also, with the SEC’s mandate for XBRL now in place, getting together under one roof will give attendees access to the information and tools they need to move forward with XBRL adoption.”

Diane will chair the panel on Day 2 of the conference on Best Practices and Current Approaches for Rendering XBRL which will include presentations from Rivet Software, Fujitsu America, Q4 Websystems, and JustSystems.

Also to be covered at the conference:

• Participatory panel discussions on rendering, versioning, data quality and validation, tagging approaches, business analytics
• Practical, hands-on taxonomy maintenance workshop covering the change management process as told through case studies from around the world
• Updates on activities in XML and XBRL development worldwide

Additional speakers will include:

• Michael Travis, Chief Operating Officer and Board of Directors, Hitachi Information & Telecommunication Systems Global Holding Company
• Steve Wright, Director of Innovation, Salesforce.com on Impact Investing
• XBRL and XML experts from CoreFiling, Ernst & Young, Fujitsu, Informatica, JustSystems, Morningstar, Oracle Corporation, Q4 Web Systems, Rivet Software, UBmatrix, XBRL US and others

When: July 28-30, 2009, workshop starts at 2pm on the first day; full days July 29 and 30

Where: Hitachi Data Systems Headquarters, Santa Clara, CA

Who should attend:Product managers, XML and XBRL developers

Complimentary media passes are available for the press. To get a complimentary pass, email Lynne.hasluck@xbrl.us.

The conference will be held at Hitachi headquarters in Santa Clara, California. To learn more and to register for the event, go to http://xbrl.us/techworkshop.

About XBRL

XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) is a royalty-free, open specification for software that uses XML data tags to describe business and financial information for public and private companies and other organizations. XBRL benefits all members of the information supply chain by utilizing a standards-based method with which users can prepare, publish in a variety of formats, exchange and analyze business and financial statements and the information they contain.

About XBRL US

XBRL US is the non-profit consortium for XML business reporting standards in the United States and is a jurisdiction of XBRL International. It represents the business information supply chain, including accounting firms, software companies, financial databases, financial printers and government agencies. Its mission is to support the implementation of XML business reporting standards through the development of taxonomies relevant for use by US public and private sectors, working with a goal of interoperability between sectors, and by promoting adoption of these taxonomies through the collaboration of all business reporting supply chain participants. XBRL US has developed taxonomies to support U.S. GAAP and common reporting practices, the Risk Return Summary in mutual fund prospectuses and the Schedule of Investments under contract with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The XBRL US GAAP Taxonomies are available for review at http://xbrl.us/taxonomies/Pages/US-GAAP2009.aspx.

Link: www.xbrl.us

CONTACT: Michelle Savage, Vice President, Communication, XBRL US, Inc., michelle.savage@xbrl.us, +1-917-747-1714

By Diane Mueller, Chair, XBRL International Technical Working Group on Rendering

Web 2.0 technologies like XML, web services and social networking have taken off like wildfire and have caught many accounting professionals off-guard. The accounting profession only recently put down their pens and made the move from paper to spreadsheets and electronic forms for processing and visualizing financial data.

Accountants and regulators alike require a visual representation of the financial reports before approving their release or attesting to the authenticity of a financial document. There is an almost gut-level need harkening back to the days of the abacus and stone tablets to an almost instinctual need to touch and see the numbers in order to believe and trust in their authenticity.

Both preparers and consumers of business reports work with human readable documents containing a very broad range of formatting decisions. Some of these formatting decisions — such as presentation order of the information or accessibility — even have legal ramifications. There is still a clear need to be able to refer to the “hard copy” — even where the “hard copy” refers to an on-screen document.

Professionals responsible for the production and dissemination of business reports are generally concerned that the information they release is carefully formatted. Accounting documents (particularly financial disclosures) attract special attention from preparers, auditors and securities regulators. The manner in which the reports are formatted — from ensuring that figures are correctly aligned, to making sure sub-totals and totals are suitably emphasized all the way through, to considering the font-size of footnotes — is important. Individual preparers have different preferences and these, too, need to be taken into account.

On the other hand, computers and consuming applications of financial data prepared by accountants care very little about the visual representation of the incoming content. Computers are only concerned with number-crunching, comparability, searchablity and further processing of the data. Most consuming applications have alternative visualizations of financial data in mind rather than the staid financial statements prepared lovingly by the accountants. Dashboards, charts and graphs, and 3-D representations of complex models fed by streams of financial data from multiple sources are the charge of consuming applications with distribution to multiple channels — mobile devices, browsers, desktops and just about anything with a display screen that hosts a picture rather than a financial report.

Why Do We Need Inline XBRL?

With the widespread adoption of XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) as the de-facto standard for delivery of financial data, a clear design issue quickly became apparent — XBRL instance documents contain well defined facts but no formatting. XBRL was designed to support the machine-to-machine transmission of financial data, and as such, has succeeded beyond its originators’ wildest dreams with adoption moving forward on a global scale.

The XBRL technical community assumed that the accounting and regulatory community would move more quickly to a world view that ‘trusted’ machine-to-machine transmission — letting go of this seemingly archaic need to “see” some form of visual representation of a financial report for review prior to submission to regulators or publication to shareholders.

However, early on, there was a push from both the accounting and regulatory communities to publish XBRL-tagged financial and business information for display in situations where the producer wants to preserve a specific visual presentation of the information. This is necessary because the order and presentation of the information can often have legal interpretive ramifications for the consumers of that information.

It became necessary to create an extension to the XBRL 2.1 standard to enable the machine-readable data to co-exist with human-readable formats. Inline XBRL was developed to make it possible to deliver structured, machine-readable data inside a human-readable rendering of the data.

It is easier for software developers — especially accounting software vendors — to create reports in HTML, the universal language for web browsers, and add hidden metadata which can be used to construct a machine-readable copy of the same information.

Inline XBRL makes it possible to extract an XBRL instance document on demand. This means that the technique makes it feasible for regulators, exchanges, banks and others responsible for the collection of business reports in XBRL format to ask preparers to merely submit their information as an Inline XBRL document. This is a human-readable XHTML file that can be stored and redistributed in this original format. At any time, an XBRL instance document can be extracted from the XHTML document, validated and passed on to relevant analytical and consuming applications and processes.

This means that vendors need only work out how to create XHTML documents and can adapt their existing report rendering capabilities to format business reports. The Inline XBRL specification defines the syntax for such documents and describes how the syntax maps into an XBRL instance.

Inline XBRL in Action

Recently, a normative stylesheet was developed by the XBRL International consortium as an implementation reference and released on SourceForge as an open source project. The stylesheet enables users to reliably and predictably strip out the unstructured information from the XHTML, then extract and create a valid XBRL instance document. This approach to financial content delivery is simpler, provides more control and flexibility in report formatting, and can be fairly easily implemented.  The extracted XBRL instance document is now machine-readable and is fully compliant with the XBRL 2.1 standard for use by regulators and other consumers of financial information. The recently released project can be found on SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/inlinexbrl/

Using on the Sourceforge Inline XBRL project code,  a Firefox Add-on to 'distill' or extract from an Inline XBRL web page has also been released. This Add-on will, after the installation in Firefox, automatically recognize when Firefox is viewing an inlineXBRL web page. Whenever the web page has iXBRL syntax included, a status bar button is activated. By pressing the button, a sidebar will shows the extracted XBRL information. You can save the extraction result as XBRL instances in xml or as zip archive. For more information, visit https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12836

The first large-scale use of Inline XBRL is being rolled out in the UK as the outcome of communication minister, Lord Carter’s Report’s recommendations to make the use of XBRL for online filings mandatory. The HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is rolling out a phased implementation for Tax Computations and Accounts (CT600 filings) as part of the its annual self-assessment regime for Company Tax reporting. By 2012, all filings will be online and using Inline XBRL.

Inline XBRL addresses XBRL’s rendering issues by putting it back in the hands of the producing applications — where it belongs. Currently, production applications control layout, look and feel, and branding for paper, web and PDF output. Why should XBRL be any different? With Inline XBRL, both preparer and consumer are guaranteed the same rendering when either party views the document in any browser. To find out more about Inline XBRL, please visit http://www.xbrl.org.

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Diane Mueller has been actively involved in the development efforts of the XBRL standard for the past decade. She is the Canadian representative to the XBRL International Steering Committee, serves as Vice Chair of that body, and chairs the XBRL Working Groups on Rendering and Software Interoperability. She currently serves as vice president of XBRL development at JustSystems, the largest independent software vendor in Japan and a worldwide leader in XML and information management technologies. Learn more about JustSystems at http://www.justsystems.com, and contact Diane at diane@justsystems.com. You may also follow Diane on Twitter at @XBRLspy.

About JustSystems and XBRL

Along with the SEC, the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) Foundation, XBRL International, and many other organizations worldwide, JustSystems has been aggressively supporting the development of the XBRL standard and integrating the interactive data format into its xfy platform. JustSystems’ software solutions work with XBRL to enable a richer way of working with and utilizing information, leveraging our technology around information search and retrieval, semantics, document management, and data integration. To learn more about our products for accelerating the creation, quality and consistency of the financial content that your organization produces and consumes today, please visit http://na.justsystems.com/xfyXBRLReport.

Please feel free to publish the above commentary in full or in part with attribution according to the Creative Commons license.

Session at 2009 Semantic Technology Conference Highlights How XBRL Brings Precise Semantics to Financial Data

The presentation is now available for download (~8M) at  http://bit.ly/zbcH2

San Jose — June 16, 2009 Recent accounting scandals have heightened the need for transparency in reporting of financial data. Companies are now required to submit regular reports and disclosures conforming to accepted accounting principles like International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (U.S. GAAP). Financial regulators around the world have also mandated that these reports be tagged using the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). As large repositories of XBRL data are now being collected, the quality of data submission is on the rise. 

Diane Mueller, vice president, XBRL development for JustSystems, and vice chair of XBRL International, Inc.; and Dave Raggett, JustSystems-sponsored W3C Fellow and member of the XBRL International Standards Board (XSB), spoke about XBRL at the 2009 Semantic Technology Conference held June 14-18 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, CA.  The session titled, “XBRL, RDF and the Semantic Web,” took place on Tuesday, June 16, 2009 

The presentation is available for download (~8M) at http://www.xbrlspy.org/sites/xbrlspy.org/files/MuellerRaggettSeTech2009XBRLRDFandSemanticWebv3.pdf

During the session, the presenters addressed how XBRL brings precise semantics to financial data via reference to external accounting principles. By combining XBRL and the semantic web, there is tremendous potential for analyzing and exploring vast amounts of financial information on companies and markets worldwide.

For more information on the 2009 Semantic Technology Conference, visit http://www.semantic-conference.com/. For more information on JustSystems, visit http://www.justsystems.com/ and the JustSystems XBRL Knowledge Center at http://na.justsystems.com/xbrl. For additional perspectives, visit and subscribe to the JustSystems RSS blog feed at http://na.justsystems.com/xbrl_blog, and follow Diane Mueller on Twitter at @XBRLspy.

About JustSystems

JustSystems is a leading global software provider with three decades of successful innovation in office productivity, information management, and consumer and enterprise software. With over 2,500 customers worldwide, the company is continuing a global expansion strategy based on its xfy enterprise software, XMetaL content lifecycle solutions, and its pioneering work in enabling XBRL financial reporting technologies. JustSystems is one of the 2008 KMWorld 100 Companies that Matter in Knowledge Management, a 2008 EContent 100 member, and was recognized on the 2008 KMWorld Trend-Setting Product list for XMetaL. Major strategic partnerships include IBM, Oracle and EMC. For more information, please visit http://www.justsystems.com. All brand names and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

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Media Contact: Elena Annuzzi for JustSystems 650-704-8664 Elena@TECHMarket.com

The SEC announced today that registrants can start utilizing the 2009 version of the US GAAP taxonomy on July 22, 2009.   The US GAAP 2009 Taxonomies are in the process of being loaded into the EDGAR system and will be available for use on July 22, 2009. The US SEC is strongly encouraging companies to begin working with this new taxonomy now. Tt is publicly available at http://xbrl.us/taxonomies/Pages/US-GAAP2009.aspx. Companies should use the latest available taxonomy for their entire fiscal year. However, due to delays in the release of  this  US GAAP 2009 taxonomy being made available, companies will be permitted to use the U.S. GAAP 1.0 taxonomy in their first required submission before switching to the US GAAP 2009 taxonomy.

See below for the full text posted at http://www.sec.gov/info/edgar/edgartaxonomies.shtml

The US SEC issued new rules requiring companies to provide financial statement information in a new interactive data format that is intended to improve its usefulness to investors. Companies are now required to provide their financial statements on their corporate Web sites in interactive data format using the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) not later than the calendar day that they submit their financial statements to the Commission (1). In this format, financial statement information can be viewed interactively from your investor relations websites, downloaded directly into spreadsheets, analyzed in a variety of ways using commercial off-the-shelf software, and used within investment models in other software formats.

The US SEC rules will apply to public companies and foreign private issuers that prepare their financial statements in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (U.S. GAAP), and foreign private issuers that prepare their financial statements using International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).

This interactive data format must be provided as an exhibit to all periodic and current reports and registration statements, as well as to transition reports for a change in fiscal year. The new rules are intended not only to make financial information easier for investors to analyze, but also to assist in automating regulatory filings and business information processing. Interactive data has the potential to increase the speed, accuracy and usability of financial disclosure, and eventually reduce costs.

The XBRL Challenge

Until now, individual investors could obtain only high-level key financial figures for large companies together with their stock price history from sites like Yahoo! Finance and MSN/Money. Institutional investors and research firms with deeper pockets could obtain real-time financial data feeds from pay-per-view data aggregators like EDGAR-Online.  However, these data sources are highly normalized, disconnected from the source, and lack any semantic annotations. These data sources are fed by automated screen-scraper aggregation applications culling information from the HTML or ASCII filings, and then mapped to the data aggregators’ various relational databases. This extraction process is expensive and error prone, especially when data has to be re-mapped to data aggregators’ relational databases prior to distribution to their various subscription-based data feeds.  Also lost in this aggregation process are essential features of financial information:  access to the reporting entities’ ‘as-reported’ story, trust in the authenticity of the content and granular detail. Data aggregated in this manner is not able to reflect the reporting entities’ as-reported financials.

The SEC ruling in January 2009 introduces a phased mandate for filing in XBRL starting with the largest companies in June 2009 and then extending to all sizes of companies over the next three years. As a result, we can expect to see very large amounts of financial data becoming available in a machine interpretable format (XBRL). The challenge is to exploit this data to provide new kinds of services to investors.

XBRL is a bit like drinking from a fire hose, there is a tremendous amount of metadata associated with each fact and there are lots of facts. This means that financial data has become a lot more interactive with an emphasis on helping users to make sense of the data.  What distinguishes XBRL is the precise semantics attached to every reported fact. This makes it easy to pull out specific figures and concepts, and facilitates accurate comparison. XBRL metadata also enables both drill-down to granular detail and linking to reference sources like definitions, rulings, and accounting standards documentation sets.

How to take advantage of this opportunity

Now is the time to enable your Investor Relations Website to comply with US SEC Mandate.

•    Expose this metadata-rich source data in ways that make it easily consumable by Search engines.
•    Provide data accurately without loss of the providence of the source files (linked data).
•    Enable users to share this content in social network and Web 2.0 applications
•    Improve the find-ability of your financial information
•    Deliver accurately rendered sharable ‘as reported’ views of your filings
•    Enable your content to remain connected to the source whenever the content is reused
•    Improving ‘trust’ in the provenance of the source of the information
•    Enable previously unattainable levels of granularity of information.

First, you need to ensure that your Investor Web Site is ready and able to accept and post XBRL filings in an easily discoverable and permanently linkable manner.  It is important that you clearly identify the data that you control on your Investor Relations Web Site. By assigning URIs (hyperlinks) to resources (actual XBRL-tagged Filings), you enable other people to talk about them, link to them, and return to them with ease.

URLs like this are really unhelpful:

http://www.mycompany.com/IR/b518b359b4abd4df0d6f7f129770b078/compdetails

A better approach is to use a URI scheme like this:

http://www.mycompany.com/IR/{CompanyId}/{filingtype}/{year}/{number}

Using such a numerical-based canonical URI provides an explicit hierarchical scheme that is much easier for search engines and other web browsing tools to discover. This approach represents the data in a way that people can use and enable you to expose the data to a wider world in a repeatable fashion.  

Secondly, to simply post the Raw XBRL files may not be enough.  You should also consider delivering a rendered view of your XBRL-tagged SEC filings alongside the Raw XBRL Filings.  As at this early stage in adoption, there are only a few desktop applications available to consume the XBRL Content and you will want make sure that your site’s visitors can take advantage of the Interactive data and access the rich semantic metadata-enhanced XBRL-tagged financial reports immediately.

Finally,  although the SEC Ruling only requires that XBRL data to be made available for at least 12 months on an issuer’s Web site(2) - it would be wise to continue to host your data on a longer, more permanent basis - links that disappear after twelve months can be very frustrating for users of that content and can create broken links in Search Engines. In additon, keeping the data around long term allows you to continue to control the data and allow for your site's visitors to perform historical analysis on your financials without having to look elsewhere to search for each filing individual on the US SEC EDGAR site or subscribe to expensive data feed..

By hosting your own financial content as XBRL on your Investor Relations website becomes infinitely more discoverable by search engines and therefore accessible to potential investors and shareholders. This is because the US SEC blocks all search engines, including Google, MSN, Yahoo, and so on, from indexing any files at the the SEC.gov Web site. This practice impedes access to the content individual investors from easily linking to and aggregating filings for their own research purposes. Instead, the SEC continues it's practice of licensing this data on a for fee basis to data aggregators.This is done by the SEC and other goverment Robots Exclusion Protocol or robots.txt protocol, iwhich is s a convention to prevent cooperating web spiders and other web robots from accessing all or part of a website which is otherwise publicly viewable. Now, there is nothing wrong with blocking misbehaving Web crawlers is important and necessary.

This new approach will enable your content to remain connected to the source improving ‘trust’ in the provenance of the source of the information and enabling a previously unattainable level of granularity of information.

If you take these few important steps you will be vastly improving the find-ability of your financial information, enable your site’s visitors to view your filings in real-time, share them with colleagues across social networks, link to the filings directly on your site, and eliminate the barriers to access to your key stakeholders.

Footnotes:

(1) The day the registration statement or report is submitted electronically to the Commission may not be the business day on which it was deemed officially filed. For example, a filing submitted after 5:30 p.m. generally is not deemed officially filed until the following business day. Under the new rules, the Web posting will be required at any time on the same calendar day that the related registration statement or report is deemed officially filed or required to be filed, whichever is earlier.

(2)The inital proposing release did not specify that the XBRL data would be required to be posted for at least 12 months on an issuer’s Web site, but commenters requested clarification and the SEC did make an clarifying amendment to the ruling.

The Securities and Exchange Commission will conduct a public seminar on June 10 from noon to 3 p.m. ET to help companies and preparers comply with new rules that require financial reports to be filed using interactive data (XBRL).

The Commission staff will present information about the technology requirements for complying with the rules and will also provide an overview of the tools and information provided by the Commission to assist with compliance. The seminar will also cover frequently asked questions about the rules and technology requirements.

In adopting the final rule, the Commission noted that interactive data has the potential to increase the speed, accuracy, and usability of financial disclosure and eventually reduce costs.

This event will be held in the auditorium at the SEC's headquarters at 100 F Street, N.E., in Washington, D.C. The seminar will be open to the public with seating on a first-come, first-served basis. The seminar also will be webcast via the SEC Web site. Captioning of the webcast will be provided. Reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities attending this event in person can be arranged by submitting a request to DisabilityProgramOfficer@SEC.gov three business days prior to the event.

To ensure the seminar is responsive to the needs of companies and preparers, the Commission staff is seeking suggested questions and topics to be discussed at the seminar. Interested parties should email their questions to Ask-OID@sec.gov and include in the subject line "Public Education Seminar."

For additional information about the seminar, contact Ask-OID@sec.gov or (202) 551-4144.

Semantic XBRL Data Search Using SPARQL -from HitachiDataInteractive.com Written by Ashu Bhatnagar

We all use Google for Web searches on a daily basis and admire the simplicity of its front-end user interface. It’s nice, clean, fast, and simple. Behind this simplicity lie sophisticated index databases and advanced search technologies, but we as users don’t need to know or understand these. All we need to know are smart keywords that help direct our searches from hundreds of billions of marked-up HTML pages scattered across the global Internet.

When we try to search using regular SQL database search technologies, though, we run into difficulties. Why? Because most of this web content is in distributed HTML flat files and isn’t organized in any centralized database with well defined data structures and schema. It’s like a world full of roads with no roadmaps. Go discover!

Search engines like Google, Ask, and others find the content that matches with our queries by building and employing centralized databases that contain metadata, where every keyword acts as a tag and has fast and efficient links to corresponding websites. In other words, a search engine acts like a very knowledgeable guide for us, responding to our queries with found/not found answers based on the Internet roads it has access to and has crawled before. Read more at Semantic XBRL Data Search Using SPARQL

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Why not use such a powerful search front-end to query financial research data? During my experience working with both sell-side and buy-side research analysts, there has been a long standing request to build such a tool, but until recently, the short answer to this request has been “No!”

No, because it’s technically too difficult or it’s too expensive.

No, because Google deals with text and not data, which has both context and meaning. Data is far more challenging to search, because even when it’s on the Web, it is marked up with HTML as text, not as data, thereby losing its context for meaningful search.

No, because there are no generally accepted standard financial dictionaries, or taxonomies, that define terms such as revenue, sales, or net income as synonyms.

Until recently this list of No’s has been long. The good news is that the list is now shrinking quickly with the increasing adoption of XBRL and EDGAR standard taxonomies and the release of several XBRL tools.

All that is needed to accomplish powerful search of financial research data is to subscribe to the SEC’s XBRL filings as free RSS feeds, extract XBRL data into our own relational or Google-like index databases, and use SQL to find answers to our queries. As an alternative, we could subscribe to third-party data services firms like Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, Factset and others that would add XBRL data to their current aggregate data and continue to offer this as a service.

The news gets even better when we add SPARQL, a W3C specified query language for RDF, to XBRL and Linked Data.

Jim Rapoza, Chief Technology Analyst of eWeek, explains:

Called SPARQL (pronounced "sparkle"), this standard brings about a standardized SQL-like query language for the Semantic Web. And, like most Semantic Web standards, it is heavily based on RDF (Resource Description Framework), although it also makes use of many Web services standards, such as WSDL (Web Services Description Language).

SPARQL essentially consists of a standard query language, a data access protocol and a data model (which is basically RDF).

Some people out there are probably thinking, So what? Sounds like just another search tool—big whoop. But there’s a big difference between blindly searching the entire Web and querying actual data models.

The ability of database queries to pull data from giant databases is pretty much the basis of a large number of enterprise applications. No one argues about the value of being able to write a query in an application that can pull relevant customer and product data.

Now, imagine writing a similarly small application that does the same thing—only with data stored across the entire World Wide Web.

That would include all the companies who not only file in XBRL but also, in conformance to SEC requirements, will be posting XBRL data on their own company websites.

In essence, with SPARQL, we can choose to build centralized databases to query XBRL data, but we don’t have to. We simply can point our queries to so-called SPARQL endpoints that — unlike traditional database requests that must be under one administrative control — can span the Web over thousands of company websites with XBRL data and obtain results as if they came from one centralized database. Imagine the cost savings in not having to build and maintain a huge and growing centralized database.

Applications for publishing XBRL as Linked Open Data are limited at this time, but they are emerging. As one example, Roberto García and Rosa Gil describe their work undertaken at a Research Group at Universitat de Lleida, Spain, which extracted 1.34 million triples from 612 XBRL filings. (Triples are semantic data elements in RDF format.) The process of extraction is machine automated and results in transforming XBRL data into Semantic Web formatted RDF data.

In addition, sufficient examples in the current Web exist to give us insight into how the user experience might look when Semantic XBRL applications go into production use. Next time you search for the best flight for your air travel on sites such as Orbitz, Kayak, or FareCompare, take a pause and observe that the flight schedules, prices and airline details are being pulled not from any one centralized database but from a variety of airline databases, in real time, to match your exact itinerary requirements, thanks to some very specialized and complex technologies.

In summary, SPARQL makes Semantic XBRL searches possible on-demand across a distributed web space while simplifying front-end design, and keeping the complexity of technology hidden and out of sight from end users.

A Google-like experience of searchable financial research data is coming. The future looks bright.

Ashu Bhatnagar is CEO of Good Morning Research, a Softpark company that specializes in building Semantic XBRL technology. The GoodMorningResearch.com machine automates XBRL tagging of Excel data in RDF format with one-click Save As XBRL functionality. Mr. Bhatnagar also moderates the Semantic XBRL group on LinkedIn.

[Hitachi Data Interactive]

By Matthew Weigelt - May 15, 2009

Measure would standardize business information collection

A House bill would require to the government to track where its money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) goes by using technology that many companies already use to monitor their financial reporting.

The Government Information Transparency Act (H.R. 2392), introduced May 14 by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), would standardize the collection of business information throughout agencies. It would require agencies to use a single data standard known as eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) and require that collected information be made readily available for public access.

XBRL has benefits in preparing and analyzing business information. It offers greater efficiency and better accuracy and reliability of data to all involved in supplying or using financial data, experts say. It’s also an open standard, free of license fees, according to XBRL International, a nonprofit consortium of 550 companies and agencies that promote the language.

XBRL tags enable automated processing of business information by computer software, cutting out laborious and costly processes of manual re-entry and comparison. Computers can recognize information in a XBRL document and exchange it with other computers. Experts say XBRL increases the speed of handling of financial data, reduces the chance of error and permits automatic checking of information.

“The technology exists to create real transparency that would allow us to track TARP dollars and value toxic assets, but the federal government is far behind the curve in implementing available solutions,” said Issa, ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

U.S. banks are currently required to disclose information to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in XBRL format. The Securities and Exchange Commission recently approved a final rule mandating the use of XBRL for all public-company reporting, with some companies required to start complying in June.

“This legislation offers more than the promise of change and transparency, it is a substantive plan to implement it,” Issa said.

The bill was referred to the oversight committee.

http://fcw.com/articles/2009/05/15/legislation-requires-xbrl-technology.aspx

By Aliya Sternstein   

A Republican House member proposed a measure on Thursday that would demand banks receiving bailout funds hand over business results in a special format that is easily accessible, after many open government advocates had urged the administration to require such formatting.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, introduced legislation, H.R. 2392, to standardize federal collection, analysis and publication of financial information regarding the business of companies through the use of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL).

"The technology exists to create real transparency that would allow us to track TARP dollars and value toxic assets but the Federal government is far behind the curve in implementing available solutions," Issa stated in a press release. "This legislation offers more than the promise of change and transparency, it is a substantive plan to implement it."

http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/05/lawmaker_calls_for_bailout_for.php