Bob Jensen's Overview of OLAP, HTML, XML, and XBRL

Bob Jensen's Overview and Timeline of OLAP, GML, SGML, HTML, XML, RDF, and XBRL

Click on Any Underlined Link in the Following Timeline

STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet --->Hypermedia --->HTML, HTTP, WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML/SMIL --->RDF and OWL ---> OLAP ---> XBRL -
SEMANTIC WEB

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Semantic.html and http://logicerror.com/semanticWeb-long
"Opening Search to Semantic Upstarts: Yahoo's new open-search platform is giving semantic search a helping hand," by Kate Greene, MIT's Technology Review, September 8, 2008 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/21342/?nlid=1322&a=f

EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html

THE FUTURE OF SEARCH (or so says IBM) --- The Future of Search (or so says IBM) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm#FutureOfSearch

From the National Science Foundation
The Birth and Rise of the Internet --- http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/nsf-net/?govDel=USNSF_51

Also see Richard Jensen's (History, U of Illinois-Chicago) --- Scholars' Guide to WWW

Extended Overview of How to Publish Excel Documents as Dynamic Web Pages (Roundtripping)

Extended Overview of OLAP

Extended Overview of HTML

Extended Overview of XML and SMIL

Extended Overview of RDF

Extended Overview of Metadata XBRL and Business Reporting on the Internet (Including a tutorial on using the demos)

I created a video tutorial for XBRL. You can download the
xbrldemos.wmv file from the following path
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/windowsmedia/

XBRL Update Threads

VRXML for Stock Exchanges and Vendors

Bob Jensen's threads on XML and RDF are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm

Bob Jensen's Technology Glossary (including links to accounting glossaries) is at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245gloss.htm

Bob Jensen's Accounting Information Systems Course is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5342/index.htm

Bob Jensen's Homepage is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

Timeline Leading Up to XBRL

STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet --->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP ---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html

Hypertext= Pages of computer text that are authored in software allowing for non linear navigation based upon button controls, hotwords, or other controls that make sequencing of pages virtually irrelevant. Hypertext authoring packages typically differ from word processing packages that are intended primarily for preparing text for hard copy printing. Hypertext software may have options to print particular pages, but the intent is for computer use rather than printing. The key to hypertext is random access that allows lightning-fast non linear navigation based upon reader choice or other reader actions such as responses to questions. (See also Hypermedia and Timeline presentation.) Popular software terminology for hypertext early on included HyperCard "stacks," Authorware "network icons," and ToolBook "books." The history of hypertext dates back to 1945 in the early days of computing and long before the invention of the PC by IBM. Sun Microsystems provides a history of hypertext at http://www.sun.com/950523/columns/alertbox/history.html

From the book Multimedia and Hypertext: The Internet and Beyond

1945 Vannevar Bush proposes Memex
1965 Ted Nelson coins the word "hypertext"
1967 The Hypertext Editing System and FRESS, Brown University, Andy van Dam
1968 Doug Engelbart demo of NLS system at FJCC
1975 ZOG (now KMS): CMU
1978 Aspen Movie Map, first hypermedia videodisk, Andy Lippman, MIT Architecture Machine Group (now Media Lab)
1984 Filevision from Telos; limited hypermedia database widely available for the Macintosh
1985 Symbolics Document Examiner, Janet Walker
1985 Intermedia, Brown University, Norman Meyrowitz
1986 OWL introduces Guide, first widely available hypertext
1987 Apple introduces HyperCard, Bill Atkinson
1987 Hypertext'87 first major conference on hypertext
1991 World Wide Web at CERN becomes first global hypertext, Tim Berners-Lee
1992 New York Times Book Review cover story on hypertext fiction
1993 Mosaic anointed Internet killer app, National Center for Supercomputing Applications
1993 A Hard Day's Night becomes the first full-length feature film in hypermedia
1993 Hypermedia encyclopedias sell more copies than print encyclopedias
1995 Netscape Corp. gains market value of almost $3G on first day of stock market trading

WWW Consortium's list of hypertext projects

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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet --->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP ---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html

PC= Personal Computer developed initially by IBM but not really appreciated for what it was worth by IBM executives who at the time believed that the future of computing would be in ever bigger and faster mainframe computers. A short history of the PC is provided by GDS at http://www.highwaygds.net/gds/pchist.html. Central to the PC was the development of the DOS operating system, invention of the BASIC computing language by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, and later developments of GUI operating systems such as the Macintosh operating system from Apple Corporation and the Windows operating systems from Microsoft Corporation. One of the most popular innovations was the development of laptop and notebook versions of the desktop computers.

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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet --->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP ---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html

GUI= An acronym for Graphical User Interface, this term refers to a software front-end meant to provide an attractive and easy to use interface between a computer user and application, which historically gave rise to the icon-based operating system of Apple Corporation computers. The GUI concept actually had its origins in the work of Alan Kay at Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in the early 1969. However, it was Apple Corporation who eventually exploited the technology that is now the fundamental basis of Mac, Windows, and other GUI operating systems that perform commands based upon bit-mapped graphics icons. This paved the way for object-oriented systems of the 1990s.

Mouse= the first screen pointer and still the most popular GUI screen pointer that allows computer users to point, click, and drag on selected areas of a computer's screen image. A history is provided at http://www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/Engineering_Graphics/_EG2001/mouse/history.html

The computer mouse has become a standard input device for modern computers. Its ease of use and the simplicity of pointing and clicking has made it as important as the keyboard.

Douge Englebert, a graduate student of electrical engineering at Berkely developed the modern mouse. Engelbat wanted to create a device that anybody could use to control a computer more naturally than a keyboard. His inspiration came from being a radar technician during World War II. In the war, he saw various types of computer input devices, some resembling the mouse. In 1959 he was granted the opportunity to pursue his goal of developing a new user interface for the computer. By 1968 Engelbat and a group of other computer scientists and electrical engineers presented their invention to the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Fransisco. Amazingly, the mouse didn't catch on until the 1980s.

The mouse didn't catch on at first because even though it was an amazing innovation, there was no need for it in the early years of computing. Most computers were simple text-only telescreens with no cursor arrows. It wasn't until the graphical interfaces that became popular in the 1980s that the mouse became widely used.

The first computer to come equipped with a mouse was the Xerox Star, an office computer introduced in the early 1970s. However, the mouse became popular when it was included with the Apple Lisa in 1983. Since then, the mouse has become increasingly more advanced and complex. Additional buttons and track wheels have been added in addition to the original two buttons. The optical mouse is a revolutionary advance in mouse technology. Because it does not have any moving parts, dirt getting caught in the gears is no longer a problem. Instead of a ball and gears, it uses a beam of light to track location on a surface. Another advantage is that it can operate on any non-reflective surface.

Englehart also came up with a larger, foot-operated control called a rat, but it never caught on.

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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet --->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP ---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html

GML and SGML= acronyms for Generalized Markup Language and Standardized Generalize Markup Language. GML text scripting was conceived in1969 IBM researchers depicting Generalized Markup Languages (and not-so-coincidentally the lead researchers were named Goldfarb, Mosher, and Lorie). It had its roots in the development of "tags" that could describe blocks of computer code, especially code dealing with document formats. You can read the following historical account at http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/sgmlhist0.html

Also in the late 1960s, a New York book designer named Stanley Rice proposed the idea of a universal catalog of parameterized 'editorial structure' tags. Norman Scharpf, director of the GCA, recognized the significance of these trends, and established a generic coding project in the Composition Committee.

The committee developed the 'GenCode(R) concept', recognizing that different generic codes were needed for different kinds of documents, and that smaller documents could be incorporated as elements of larger ones. The project evolved into the GenCode Committee, which later played an instrumental role in the development of the SGML standard.

2. GML and SGML: languages for generic coding

In 1969, Charles Goldfarb was leading an IBM research project on integrated law office information systems. Together with Edward Mosher and Raymond Lorie he invented the Generalized Markup Language (GML) as a means of allowing the text editing, formatting, and information retrieval subsystems to share documents.

GML (which, not coincidentally, comprises the initials of its three inventors) was based on the generic coding ideas of Rice and Tunnicliffe. Instead of a simple tagging scheme, however, GML introduced the concept of a formally-defined document type with an explicit nested element structure.

Major portions of GML were implemented in mainframe 'industrial strength' publishing systems by IBM and others and achieved substantial industry acceptance. IBM itself, reckoned to be the world's second largest publisher, adopted GML and now produces over 90% of its documents with it.

After the completion of GML, Goldfarb continued his research on document structures, creating additional concepts, such as short references, link processes, and concurrent document types, that were not part of GML but were later to be developed as part of SGML.

3. Development of SGML as an International Standard

In 1978, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) committee on Information Processing established the Computer Languages for the Processing of Text committee, chaired by Charles Card, then of Univac, with Norman Scharpf as a member. Goldfarb was asked to join the committee and eventually to lead a project for a text description language standard based on GML. The GCA GenCode committee supported the effort and provided a nucleus of dedicated people for the task of developing Goldfarb's basic language design for SGML into a standard.

The first working draft of the SGML standard was published in 1980. By 1983, the GCA was able to recommend the sixth working draft as an industry standard (GCA 101-1983). Major adopters included the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the US Department of Defense.

In 1984, with feedback from the GCA standard in hand, three more working drafts were produced. The project, which had been authorized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as well as ANSI, reorganized. It began regular international meetings as what is now called ISO/IEC JTC1/SC18/WG8, chaired by James Mason of the US Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Work also continued in the ANSI committee, now called X3V1.8, chaired by William Davis of SGML Associates, and supported by the GCA GenCode committee, chaired by Sharon Adler of IBM. Alignment between ISO and ANSI was maintained by Goldfarb continuing as technical leader, serving as project editor for both groups.

SGML is especially important in leading up to HTML, XML, and XBRL. See http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/general.html
One of my favorite SGML sites is at http://www.ucc.ie/xml/

A.3 What is SGML?

SGML is the Standard Generalized Markup Language (ISO 8879:1985), the international standard for defining descriptions of the structure of different types of electronic document. There is an SGML FAQ at http://www.infosys.utas.edu.au/info/sgmlfaq.txt which is posted every month to the comp.text.sgml newsgroup, and the SGML Web pages are at http://xml.coverpages.org/.

SGML is very large, powerful, and complex. It has been in heavy industrial and commercial use for over a decade, and there is a significant body of expertise and software to go with it. XML is a lightweight cut-down version of SGML which keeps enough of its functionality to make it useful but removes all the optional features which make SGML too complex to program for in a Web environment.

ISO standards like SGML are governed by the International Organization for Standardization in Geneva, Switzerland, and voted into or out of existence by representatives from every country's national standards body.

If you have a query about an international standard, you should contact your national standards body for the name of your country's representative on the relevant ISO committee or working group.

You can read more about SGML by clicking on the Extended Overview of XML

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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet --->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP ---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html

Internet= An international grouping of computer networks. The Internet started as a relatively tiny United States Department of Defense (DOD) Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) project in 1969. It commenced with the networking of four computers. The Internet was not widely known between 1969 and 1991. Its popularity exploded when HTML, HTTP, and the World Wide Web made it much easier to use the Internet. For interactive computing between computers on the Internet, see Distributed Network Computing. For web browsers see Web browsers, Java, GINA, Gopher, Mosaic, and SLIP.

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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet --->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP ---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html

Hypermedia= Hypertext with added features for audio and video features. Hypermedia may also entail touch screen or remote control capabilities such that users can navigate by touching the computer screen or remote control devices. Eventually hypermedia will entail other senses such as smell. The key to hypermedia is random access that allows lightning-fast non linear navigation based upon reader choice or other reader actions such as responses to questions. The term "multimedia" is not totally synonymous with "hypermedia," because multimedia may not entail hypertext authoring. Hypermedia is rooted in the early "intermedia" 1985-1991 developments for Apple computers by Norman Meyrowitz from Brown University. For a brief history in intermedia, see http://www.iicm.edu/rp_feedback/n46 .

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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet --->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP ---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html

HTML= An acronym for a HyperText Markup Language DTD.

HTML is the language used to tag various parts of a Web document so browsing software will know how to display that document's links, text, graphics and attached media. Your are viewing an HTML document at this moment. The popular HTML is a subset of the GML text scripting conceived in1969 IBM researchers depicting Generalized Markup Languages (and not-so-coincidentally the lead researchers were named Goldfarb, Mosher, and Lorie). Between 1978 and 1987, Dr. Charles F. Goldfarb led the team that developed the SGML Standard GML that is became International Standard ISO 8879. In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee led a team of particle physicists that invented the World Wide Web using a very small part of SGML that became the widely known and used scripting language known as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). SGML is tremendously powerful but inefficient and complex. HTML is marvelously simple but not very powerful.

In 1990 there were less than 50 users of HTML. Most of them were physicists connected in one way or the other to Tim Berners Lee. In 2001, there were over 300 million users of HTML documents on the Web. The World Wide Web (WWW) or the Web as it is popularly known commenced with HTML. It would, however, not have taken off if the HTTP protocol for reading HTML documents had not been developed for Web browsers. Credit for this goes to Mosaic invented in 1992 by a University of Illinois undergraduate student named Marc Andreessen. The history of Mosaic is given at http://www.wunderland.com/WTS/Jake/CubeArt/Descriptions/MosaicHistory.html . Andreessen later founded Netscape and the famous Netscape browser that led to an explosion of users on the Web.

Continued at Extended Overview of HTML

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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet --->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP ---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html

CGI, Java, JavaScript, DHTML, ActiveX, ASP, and other developments came along to provide dynamic and/or computational computing to the Web. Actually, Common Gateway Interface (CGI) coding that allows remote (client) computers to communicate with server (host) computers commenced in 1969 about the same time as the Internet. Among other things, CGI was used in MAGI by IBM for television commercials.

Whereas CGI scripts reside on the server (host) computer and process data (e.g., search requests) from the remote users, other dynamic computing alternatives can be downloaded into the computers of the remote users such that the remote machines actually do the computing of such things as mathematical functions and data processing. JavaScript and DHTML are popular scripting inserts into HTML that add dynamic computing to "dead" HTML scripts.

The Micrrosoft 2000 upgrades make use of HTML, DHTML, and XML. For example, it is possible to save an interactive Excel workbook or an Excel chart as a dynamic D HTML document. For an illustrations and a video summary, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/dhtml/excel01.htm

See CGI, Java, JavaScript, DHTML, ActiveX, ASP

Also see Round Tripping.

Also See CFML

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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet --->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP ---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html

XML= eXtensible Markup Language. One of my favorite XML sites is at http://www.ucc.ie/xml/

A.1 What is XML?

XML is the Extensible Markup Language. It is designed to improve the functionality of the Web by providing more flexible and adaptable information identification.

It is called extensible because it is not a fixed format like HTML (a single, predefined markup language). Instead, XML is actually a `metalanguage' -- a language for describing other languages -- which lets you design your own customized markup languages for limitless different types of documents. XML can do this because it's written in SGML, the international standard metalanguage for text markup systems (ISO 8879).

A.2 What is XML for?

XML is intended `to make it easy and straightforward to use SGML on the Web: easy to define document types, easy to author and manage SGML-defined documents, and easy to transmit and share them across the Web.'

It defines `an extremely simple dialect of SGML which is completely described in the XML Specification. The goal is to enable generic SGML to be served, received, and processed on the Web in the way that is now possible with HTML.'

`For this reason, XML has been designed for ease of implementation, and for interoperability with both SGML and HTML'

[Quotes are from the XML specification]. XML is not just for Web pages: it can be used to store any kind of structured information, and to enclose or encapsulate information in order to pass it between different computing systems which would otherwise be unable to communicate.

Continued at Extended Overview of XML

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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet --->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF and OWL ---> OLAP ---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html

Resource Description Framework (RDF) = a framework for metadata and provides for interoperability for applications in "machine-understandable" information on the Web. RDF draws upon several technologies such as XML (Extensible Markup Language). RDF a recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium currently headed by Tim Bermers-Lee, the creater of the HTML markup language and the http protocol that is the basis of the World Wide Web. Over the long run, Berners-Lee envisions a time when Web sites can be devoid of most broken links and difficult-to-find information.

The first step to understanding RDF is to distinguish between data and metadata. Metadata tags in documents and databases provide "data about data" like unseen genes provide data about body parts. One of the drawbacks of HTML is that HTML tags relate only symbols rather than attributes of what the symbols depict. For example, HTML tags tell us how to display the word "eyes" in a web document but there are no tags related to attributes such as eye color, eye size, vision quality, and susceptibility to various eye diseases.

For example, HTML tags relate only to formatting and linking tags on words red and purple appearing in a document. HTML tags do not disclose that both words depict colors, because HTML does not associate words with meanings. Metadata, on the otherhand, attaches meanings to the data by attaching hidden attribute tags. For example, attached to the word "petal" might be an invisible tag that records information that the petal has color having particular coded numbers for color hue and color saturation for rose petals. When any petal's invisible tags are read in a meta search engine, it would be possible to identify types of roses having a range of hue and saturation commonalities. Poppies would be excluded because they do not have rose tags. Red herrings (a term for false leads in a mystery) would be excluded because they do not have a tagged attribute for color.

In a sense, metadata is analogous to genetic code of a living organism. Attributes in hidden tags become analogous to attributes coded into genes that determine the color of a flower's petals, degree of resistance to certain diseases, etc. If we knew the genetic "metadata" code of all flowering plants, we could quickly isolate the subsets of all known flowering plants having red petals or resistance to a particular plant disease. In botony and genetics, the problem lies is discovering the metadata codes that nature has already programmed into the genes. In computer documents and databases, the problem is one of programming in the metadata codes that will conform to a world wide standard. That standard will most likely be the RDF standard that is currently being developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) having Tim Berners-Lee as its current Director.

Click Here for an Extended Overview of RDF

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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet --->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP ---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html

OLAP= Online Analytical Processing database design in which data can be analyzed from a multidimensional point of view. The term was first used in 1993 by the father of relational database systems, an IBM mathematician named E.F. Codd. Both OLAP and its history are briefly explained by Don Burleson at http://www.oreview.com/9602burl.htm

Dr. E. F. Codd first used the term OLAP in a 1993 white paper sponsored by Arbor Software. In this same paper, Codd also created 12 rules for OLAP. (See the "OLAP Bibliography" for a summary of OLAP white papers and magazines articles, including Dr. Codd's white paper.) Despite Codd's claims of new technology, some offerings such as IRI Express, now called Oracle Express, date to the early 1970s. (For more information on OLAP and Oracle Express Objects, please see Dan Bulos' article, "OLAP Comes of Age: Oracle Express Objects.") There is a popular forum on the Internet that discusses OLAP issues at http://www.comp.database.olap .

The history and background of OLAP are also given in the OLAP Council Whitepaper at http://www.olapcouncil.org/research/whtpaply.htm

To read more about OLAP and view its demos, go to Extended Overview of OLAP

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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet --->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP ---> XBRL
SEMANTIC WEB
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Semantic.html

EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html

XBRL= eXtensible Business Reporting Language. This is an extension of XML metatag technology key terminologies in business, accounting, and financial reporting. The major purpose is to allow users to locate and analyze financial reports or portions of financial reports in a manner that is far more efficient and effective than using traditional search engines and EDGAR utilities. I also highly recommend the XBRL history and news site at XBRL headquarters at http://www.xbrl.org/Home/
Also see http://www.w3.org/

Most of the posts I looked at for XBRL are quoted and linked at:

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm#TimelineXBRL
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm#HTMLextended

Many of these links are dated, but they do provide a history of XBRL.

Probably the most important XBRL and IDEA links at the moment are as follows:

IDEA (destined to replace EDGAR) --- http://www.sec.gov/spotlight/idea.shtml

XBRL Home --- http://www.xbrl.org/Home/
www.xbrl.org is XBRL International. www.xbrl.us is the U.S. jurisdiction.

Financial Reporting Using XBRL (maintained by Charles Hoffman) --- http://xbrl.squarespace.com/journal/?currentPage=2

XBRL Canada Blog (maintained by Jerry Trites) --- http://www.zorba.ca/xbrlblog.html

XBRL Networking --- http://xbrlnetwork.ning.com/

Hitachi interactive data blog on XBRL --- http://hitachidatainteractive.com/

TryXBRL --- http://www.tryxbrl.org/

Bryant University Resource Center --- http://www.xbrl.org/Home/

Rivet XBRL Markup Software (Proprietary) --- http://www.rivetsoftware.com/

UB Matrix Enterprise Applications Suite (Proprietary) --- http://www.ubmatrix.com/products/enterprise_application_suite.htm

500 Largest Corporations Registered by the SEC Must Markup Financial Statements with XBRL Tags

December 17, 2008 message from Neal Hannon [nhannon@GMAIL.COM]

Some of the largest U.S. companies will have to file their financial reports next year using technology designed to make it easier for investors to read and analyze the data under a rule adopted by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. The SEC voted 4-1 to require 500 of the largest public companies to begin filing their financial reports using the technology known as XBRL, or extensible business reporting language, by mid-2009. The SEC voted, also by 4-1, in favor of requiring mutual funds to file their risk and return information using XBRL to make it easier for investors to analyze the performance, risk and fees of thousands of funds. Mutual funds will be required to file the data using the electronic tags by Jan. 1, 2011."

Pop the champange and throw the confetti! XBRL is finally mandatory for SEC filings starting with quarters and years ending after June 15, 2009. Although the final rule details will not be official until published in the Federal Register, we did learn today that XBRL filings will be required and that liability on the XBRL will be phased in over a two year period. In other words, the XBRL filing of G.E. for the second quarter of 2011, two years after the first filing in 2009, will carry "as filed" status. The one discenting vote, from commissioner Aguilar, was an objection to the push back on liability. Commissioner Aguilar wanted full liability on XBRL filings as of June 15, 2009.

"TryXBRL.org Launched," SmartPros, March 28, 2008 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x61325.xml

A new Web site, TryXBRL.com, allows free access to view and analyze complete XBRL-tagged financial statements for over 12,000 publicly traded corporations.

After registering on the portal, TryXBRL.org, corporate finance professionals can educate themselves about the XBRL tagging process and view their own historical financial information in XBRL format. Investors and analysts can experience how XBRL reduces the complexity and costs associated with analyzing performance data.

The site is a collaboration of EDGAR Online Inc., a business and financial information provider, and R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company, a print services company.

"Our goal has been to deliver solutions that do not require technical expertise or excessive time commitments by corporations wishing to take part in the SEC Voluntary Program or to familiarize themselves with XBRL," said Philip Moyer, President and CEO of EDGAR Online, Inc. "We are providing open access to our vast XBRL database through a solution that enables corporations to begin filing XBRL content with the SEC in as little as a few hours."

RR Donnelley and EDGAR Online have collaborated to deliver XBRL filing solutions to corporations since 2005.

Once again that site is at http://www.tryxbrl.org/

April 1, 2008 reply from Amy Dunbar [Amy.Dunbar@BUSINESS.UCONN.EDU]

I just tried the site. Wow. Very powerful. I confirmed the numbers for one company to make sure I knew what I was seeing. It pulled the 2007 four quarter numbers for my selected company and then the 4th qtr numbers for the three peer companies and my selected company. I'm not sure where that 12,000 publicly traded corporations is coming from. They must mean filings, not corporations. I found the following table for March/June 2005 in Appendix F. http://www.sec.gov/info/smallbus/acspc/acspc-finalreport.pdf If you include pink sheet companies, the data for which are not publicly available (at least to my knowledge), the total climbs to 13,094. Does anyone have a source for more recent numbers of publicly traded corporations?

Listing Venue Number of Companies Listed NYSE 2,553 AMEX 747 NASDAQ National Market 2,580 NASDAQ Capital Market1 593 OTC Bulletin Board 2,955 Total 9,428

The table (I only show part of it) has the following footnote explanation: Source: Public data includes 13,094 companies from the Center for Research in Securities Prices at the University of Chicago for NYSE and AMEX companies as of March 31, 2005 and from NASDAQ for NASDAQ and OTC Bulletin Board companies and from Datastream Advance for Pink Sheets companies as of June 10, 2005. This table was compiled by members of the staff of the SEC's Office of Economic Analysis and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Commission, the Commissioners, or other members of the Commission staff.

Amy Dunbar UConn

August 19, 2008 message from Roger Debreceny

The SEC was much quicker than I had expected in getting up the archive of the webcast on IDEA .. it is now available at http://www.connectlive.com/events/secnews/ .. see Chairman Cox as the highest paid computer tutor in the USA!

The new system is called IDEA, short for Interactive Data Electronic Applications. Based on a completely new architecture being built from the ground up, it will at first supplement and then eventually replace the EDGAR system. The decision to replace EDGAR marks the SEC’s transition from collecting forms and documents to making the information itself freely available to investors to give them better and more up-to-date financial disclosure in a form they can readily use.
SEC Announces Successor to EDGAR Database, 2008-179 --- http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2008/2008-179.htm
Also see http://www.accountingweb.com/blogs/fei_financial_reporting_blog.html

XBRL Video

"'XBRL in Plain English' on YouTube," SmartPros, May 23, 2008 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x61948.xml

YouTube Link --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F1E-2LkhW8

June 3, 2008 reply from James Richards [jdrozwa@IINET.NET.AU]

Hi,

Charlie Hoffman has another on his blog – http://xbrl.squarespace.com/journal/?currentPage=2 .

Cheers.

Jim Richards

Bob Jensen's older videos on XBRL --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/

"SEC unveils 'Financial Explorer' investor tool using XBRL," AccountingWeb, February 20, 2008 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=104665

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox has announced the launch of the "Financial Explorer" on the SEC Web site to help investors quickly and easily analyze the financial results of public companies. Financial Explorer paints the picture of corporate financial performance with diagrams and charts, using financial information provided to the SEC as "interactive data" in eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL).

At the click of a mouse, Financial Explorer lets investors automatically generate financial ratios,

graphs, and charts depicting important information from financial statements. Information including earnings, expenses, cash flows, assets, and liabilities can be analyzed and compared across competing public companies. The software takes the work out of manipulating the data by entirely eliminating tasks such as copying and pasting rows of revenues and expenses into a spreadsheet. That frees investors to focus on their investments' financial results through visual representations that make the numbers easier to understand. Investors can use Financial Explorer by visiting www.sec.gov/xbrl .

"XBRL is fast becoming the universal language for the exchange of business information and it is the future of financial reporting," said Cox. "With Financial Explorer or another XBRL viewer, investors will be able to quickly make sense of financial statements. In the near future, potentially millions of people will be able to analyze and compare financial statements and make better-informed investment decisions. That's a big benefit to ordinary investors."

David Blaszkowsky, Director of the SEC's Office of Interactive Disclosure, encouraged investors to try out the new software. "Financial Explorer will help investors analyze investment choices much quicker. I encourage both companies and investors to visit the SEC Web site, try the software, and get a first-hand glimpse of the future of financial analysis, especially for the retail investor."

Financial Explorer is open source, meaning that its source code is free to the public, and technology and financial experts can update and enhance the software. As interactive data becomes more commonplace, investors, analysts, and others working in the financial industry may develop hundreds of Web-based applications that help investors garner insights about financial results through creative ways of analyzing and presenting the information.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
The Financial Explorer link --- http://209.234.225.154/viewer/home/
Note the "Take a Tour" option.

Bob Jensen's videos (created before the SEC created the Financial Explorer) are at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/
When I can find some time, I'll create a Financial Explorer update video.

XBRL Blogs and Networks

Financial Reporting Using XBRL (maintained by Charles Hoffman) --- http://xbrl.squarespace.com/journal/?currentPage=2

XBRL Canada Blog (maintained by Jerry Trites) --- http://www.zorba.ca/xbrlblog.html

XBRL Networking --- http://xbrlnetwork.ning.com/

December 8, 2007 message from Saeed Roohani [sroohani@COX.NET]

1-We now have: XBRL for Dummies – A Reference for the Rest of Us, ISBN: 978-0-470-22874-6 Published by Wiley. This is a quick course on XBRL without getting too technical.

2-US GAAP Taxonomy project is completed for public review http://xbrl.us/USGAAPreview/Pages/default.aspx Academics with any interest in financial accounting, auditing, or XBRL are strongly encouraged to go to the web site and evaluate this product. The use of archival data about public companies will be impacted by this US. GAAP taxonomy, most likely we all have a dog in this fight. Although a lot of tools and guidance provided by the website, you might need additional skills/training for this evaluation. Charlie Hoffman charles.hoffman@ubmatrix.com , also father of XBRL, has offered to provide such training for academics and I will be happy to coordinate it; please let me know.

Saeed Roohani
Bryant University

January 14, 2008 message from Dennis Beresford [dberesfo@TERRY.UGA.EDU]

Here's a link to a very interesting recent speech by SEC Chairman Chris Cox - http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/2008/spch011008cc.htm.

Among other things he says: "So to sum up, this is what you need to know from the SEC's standpoint: IFRS is coming. XBRL is coming. And mutual recognition is coming."

From this and many other recent activities at the SEC, FASB, Congress and elsewhere, it appears that both IFRS and XBRL are nearer than some might have imagined. And educators should be taking these developments into consideration now, or may be left behind.

Denny Beresford

SEC releases new XBRL analytical tool
XBRL US, Inc., the nonprofit consortium dedicated to the adoption of XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language), a technology standard for the reporting of financial and business information in the U.S., strongly supports the Securities and Exchange Commission's launch of an online, interactive tool that allows investors to instantly extract, compare, and analyze executive compensation for the largest 500 companies in the United States . . . This tool relies on the power of XBRL for the compensation data and underscores the flexibility and usefulness of "tagged" data. The SEC announcement comes a year after it adopted stricter rules on executive pay disclosure that now require more detail in annual shareholder proxy statements. The new application uses XBRL data created by the SEC and allows investors and researchers to immediately create reports showing salary, bonus, stock awards, option awards, non-equity incentive plan compensation, change in pension value, and other compensation figures for executives at the top 500 companies.
"SEC releases new XBRL analytical tool," AccountingWeb, January 10, 2008 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/item/104442

Bob Jensen's video demos of XBRL are at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/

XBRL Video

"'XBRL in Plain English' on YouTube," SmartPros, May 23, 2008 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x61948.xml

Link forwarded by Roger Debreceny on April 9, 2007 on posting by XBRL leader Charlie Hoffman ---
http://www.actgov.org/actiac/documents/pdfs/XBRLWhitePaper.pdf

XBRL: You Can't Ignore It Anymore
The SEC has poured $54 million into a new interactive reporting tool to replace the retiring Edgar. Now the Big Four say it is time to scrap quarterly reports in favor of real-time (read: daily) financial reporting. If the phrase "XBRL" put you to sleep in the past, it's time to wake up. And as momentum for improving the format of data reporting builds, the push for enriched information content is moving along, too. Indeed, the big audit firms are calling on corporations to report scads of non-financial data to buttress the financials.
"XBRL: You Can't Ignore It Anymore," CFO Magazine Special Report, Various Dates in 2006 --- http://www.cfo.com/guides/guide.cfm/8310234?f=members_121406&x=1

THE INTERACTIVE DATA MOVEMENT

Q&A: Microsoft's Laux on Finance Reports The software giant's director of technical accounting and reporting thinks that once CFOs clear the Sarbox 404 hurdle, they'll show more enthusiasm for XBRL and the reporting of non-financial data.

Will the AICPA Take Over XBRL Standards? Companies could be filing XBRL-ready financial statements as soon as 2008. But some observers worry that the definitions corporations will have to follow will be written almost entirely by accountants.

The Good and Bad About XBRL's Future The setup costs for XBRL is relatively low, but without the proper user tools, regulatory filings can turn into "gibberish."

XBRL Will Keep Investors Wanting More The programming language will pique, not satiate, investors' appetite for more information.

SEC Hires a Company It's Investigating Hired on Monday to work on the commission's new filing system, BearingPoint earlier reported that it would file its financials late—and that it was under investigation by the SEC.

10-Ks, 8-Ks a Thing of the Past? In announcing that the SEC's XBRL project will be done within a year, Chairman Christopher Cox said investors will be able to assemble their own financial data, rather than rely on current regulatory documents.

XBR-What? Even as SEC chairman Cox champions "interactive data," few CFOs seem impressed. Is that because too few of the benefits accrue to them?

Another XBRL Nudge from the SEC The SEC issues a formal request to add an XBRL analysis tool to its online Edgar system. The move increases pressure on companies to voluntarily adopt the technology.

Will XBRL Improve Analyst Coverage? If more companies filed financial documents using XBRL, analysts would be able to spend less time on data collection and would be likely to ''expand buy- and sell-side coverage,'' according to one panelist at an SEC roundtable.

GE, Pepsi Join SEC Data Pilot More companies agree to provide the SEC with financial data in XBRL format, a program strongly backed by Chairman Christopher Cox.

Ready or Not, XBRL Is Coming The SEC and FASB are gearing up for XBRL, suggesting it's only a matter of time before its use becomes mandatory.

Tagged, But Not It Yet A small group of companies has signed up with the SEC to test Internet-tagging of financial data. Will this latest effort finally launch the long-predicted XBRL revolution?

XBRL: From Tags to Riches? The SEC is offering limited liability relief, the ability to file using Form 8-K, the freedom to tag just a portion of data, and other incentives to encourage companies to file financial data using XBRL.

What XBRL Means For You XBRL promises to bring a little context to numbers. And yes, that's a good thing.

THE SKINNY ON XBRL

For a more laid-back approach to our coverage of interactive data, check out the blog posts below, or click to go to the main blog page.

XBRL? No Thanks, Chaps

The Real-Time Reporting Conundrum

IDA? EVA? XENA?

Cue EDGAR's Fat Lady

Tiny XBRL

XBRL: Is it a TWR of BABL?

A Question of Terms

Bob Jensen's threads on XBRL --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm

The XBRL U.S. consortium completed its U.S. GAAP taxonomy, a key step necessary for the full implementation of interactive data technology for financial reporting. The Financial Accounting Foundation and critical stakeholder groups including analysts, public company preparers and software providers are reviewing the draft taxonomy before it is released for public review, said the SEC, which has contributed funding to the project. For more information, visit www.xbrl.org/us/taxonomies or www.sec.gov/spotlight/xbrl.htm. --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/nov2007/highlights.htm

From Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, October 2007 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/oct2007/smart_stops.htm
FEDERAL FOCUS
www.sec.gov/spotlight.shtml
Visit this site for a rundown of hot topics on the SEC’s radar—including internal control reporting divisions, XBRL initiatives and IFRS. You can access transcripts and webcasts of roundtable discussions on mutual recognition, the proxy process and hedge funds, as well as information on the SEC’s new Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting (see “Seeking Clarity,” page 30). You also can revisit older topics such as auditor independence and corporate officer statements that have been retired to the “Archive” page (www.sec.gov/spotlight/spotarchive.htm).

Bob Jensen's threads on XBRL are embedded in the file at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm

Bob Jensen's XBRL video tutorials are at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/

XBRL and the SEC in December 2007

"SEC releases taxonomy for GAAP financial reports," AccountingWeb, December 6, 2007 ---

The Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of Interactive Disclosure is heralding the release for public comment of computer labels that will help companies make their financial disclosures more useful for investors. The labels are already supported by at least nine software companies whose products will enable public companies to make quarterly and annual financial reports available in interactive data form instead of text form. Interactive data concepts allow companies to present their financial information in an electronic format that investors, analysts, and others can use to more easily locate and analyze desired information. The interactive data is encoded in a format known as eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), which allows companies to map their financial information to a set of computer codes that represent U.S. GAAP accounting standards. This standardized list of codes used to represent U.S. GAAP is known as a taxonomy.

The SEC's Office of Interactive Disclosure, created in October to lead the transformation to interactive financial reporting by public companies, encourages broad public review of the taxonomy and the corresponding instructions about how to create a financial statement in XBRL.

"We've been saying that interactive data is on the brink of transforming the review and analysis of financial information for the benefit of investors and public companies alike," said David Blaszkowsky, Director of the SEC's Office of Interactive Disclosure. "With the release of this taxonomy today, investors can now begin to visually see the progress being made, and so will every public company that uses GAAP. Interactive data is no longer merely an up-and-comer, it's becoming reality. We encourage both users and preparers of financial information to participate in this public review so we can advance interactive data to be recognized as, not only amazing technology, but a superior way of doing business and making faster, cheaper, and more informed investment decisions."

The SEC launched its interactive data filing initiative in April 2005 to make filings more accessible and understandable to the common investor. A test group of public companies have since been voluntarily submitting XBRL documents as exhibits to periodic reports and Investment Company Act filings. Through feedback from these voluntary XBRL filers and a global collaboration of technologists, the XBRL US project team created tags for a financial reporting taxonomy that covers every U.S. GAAP accounting concept — virtually every fact that a company might want to report on its financial statements and in its footnotes.

The SEC will use the initial financial statements prepared using the new taxonomy to help it update its electronic filing system to seamlessly accept and render the filings.

"We have gone a long way since we started this in 2005. The voluntary pilot program started out when there was nothing like the fully-fledged taxonomies that we are going to release to the public on Wednesday," SEC Chairman Christopher Cox told a media briefing in Vancouver earlier this week.

"That's really what got us from a slow jog to right now, a full gallop," he said following a presentation to the 16th annual XBRL International Conference.

A free taxonomy review tool is publicly available on the Internet at usgaap.xbrl.us along with other information, including the nine software companies whose products are compatible with the new draft taxonomy. The public comment period ends on April 5, 2008.

Once the testing period ends, regulators expect to be ready to propose that U.S. companies begin filing financial reports in XBRL format.

"A lot is going to depend on the acceptance phase that we are now entering for the U.S. GAAP taxonomies," Cox told Reuters news.

"If that all works the way it's supposed to then we'll have some opportunities to introduce it more broadly. If there are suggestions from people who are using it that are going to take time to meet, then that will influence our thinking."

Some U.S. companies, including General Electric, Microsoft, and United Technologies Corp., are already using XBRL voluntarily, and international acceptance has been strong, with several countries, including Japan, China, and the Netherlands, embracing the format.

Informative podcasts available

XBRL US, Inc., the nonprofit consortium dedicated to the adoption of XBRL, initiated its first two podcasts featuring important stakeholders. The programs featured Jeff Diermeier, CFA, president and CEO of CFA Institute, and Barry Melancon, president and CEO of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Podcasts can be downloaded to a handheld device or simply listened to online at http://xbrl.us.

The series of 10-minute interviews will feature industry experts presenting their view on interactive data or covering a specific topic related to XBRL. The series is designed to address key stakeholder viewpoints but will also feature timely and sometimes controversial topics related to the use of interactive data in different reporting situations.

Diermeier kicked off the webcast series, reflecting the fact that Wall Street is the ultimate stakeholder in the XBRL movement. CFA Institute, a global professional association that is well known for its administration of the Chartered Financial Analyst(R) (CFA(R)) and Certificate in Investment Performance Measurement (CIPM) curriculum and exam programs, recently became a member of XBRL US and has been conducting a roadshow series to educate its members about interactive data. It has also surveyed its members about their awareness

Continued in article

December 8, 2007 message from Roger Debreceny [Roger@DEBRECENY.COM]

XBRL International has held its semi-annual meeting in Vancouver this week. Some key elements of the meeting were:

· As many on AECM will know, the new (see what $5m will buy) US GAAP XBRL taxonomy is on its way. It has moved from internal review within the XBRL community to public review. See www.xbrl.us and http://usgaap.xbrl.us/ for the draft taxonomy. You can sign up to review the taxonomy, code financials etc. The quality of the taxonomy is central to the adoption of XBRL by the SEC.

· An interesting set of ideas from Peter Wallison of the AEI on the role of XBRL in capital markets presented as a keynote at the meeting is at http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.27191/pub_detail.asp

· There are two new MP3 podcasts on XBRL at www.xbrl.us .. Mark Bolgiano, CEO of XBRL US, interviews AICPA President Barry Melancon and CFA Institute President Jeff Diermeier.

Later, all presentations will be available at http://archive.xbrl.org/. Presentations from earlier XBRL International conferences are available on the archive.

Roger

..................................................................

Roger Debreceny

Shidler College Distinguished Professor of Accounting

School of Accountancy

Shidler College of Business

University of Hawai`i at Mānoa

2404 Maile Way, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA

roger@debreceny.com
rogersd@hawaii.edu

Office: +1 808 956 8545 Cell: +1 808 393 1352

www.debreceny.com

Bob Jensen's video demos of XBRL are at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/

"Interactive Data - Building XBRL into Accounting Information Systems," by Jerry Trites --- http://www.cica.ca/index.cfm/ci_id/27401/la_id/1.htm

Question
How useful is XBRL for mutual funds?

From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review on August 31, 2007

Language of Love for Mutual Funds: XBRL
by Daisy Maxey
The Wall Street Journal
Aug 28, 2007
Page: C11
Click here to view the full article on WSJ.com ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118825363850710278.html?mod=djem_jiewr_ac

TOPICS: Accounting, Accounting Information Systems, Financial Statement Analysis, Securities and Exchange Commission

SUMMARY: Maxey describes the usefulness of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) for comparing mutual funds' reported results. "In April 2005, public companies began voluntarily submitting interactive-data documents as exhibits to reports and other filings with the SEC. The mutual-fund submissions are an extension of that program. "

CLASSROOM APPLICATION: Reference in this review to a white paper from the SEC on XBRL and the SEC's involvement with this system allows for discussion of the system's use for all financial statements submitted to the SEC. Obtain access to the white paper at http://www.edgar-online.com/?contactID=55822111

QUESTIONS:
1.) What is XBRL?

2.) How is the Securities and Exchange Commission introducing use of this system by financial statement filers and, now, mutual funds? Hint: in addition to the description in the article, you may find this information by searching the SEC's web site (www.sec.gov) for XBRL. Provide a proper citation of documents you use for this purpose. One document you may find is the transcript of remarks at the 15th International XBRL Conference by Commissioner Kathleen L. Casey in Munich, Germany on June 4, 2007 available at http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/2007/spch060407klc.htm

3.) Why do you think companies volunteer to begin reporting under the XBRL system? Why do you think the SEC is beginning this system with voluntary reporting in this format?

4.) The SEC web site refers to an article in The Accounting Review investigating financial statement users' behaviors in accessing financial statement information. The location of the paper on the SEC's web site is http://www.sec.gov/news/press/4-515/4515-6art.pdf Read the summary of the paper. Draw an analogy from these research results to the impact of XBRL for mutual fund investors.

SMALL GROUP ASSIGNMENT:
Follow the directions in the article to access the SEC web site tool for accessing interactive data. Select two companies in the same industry and prepare a comparison report of income statement data. Download the data to Excel and calculate a common-sized income statement (showing the top line of the income statement, sales, as 100% and all other elements as percentages of sales). Assess differences between the two companies. Identify other sources of data for financial statement analysis (for example, Yahoo! Finance). Compare and contrast the use of XBRL with other available sources of data. What is the advantage of having interactive data available in the financial statement filings themselves as opposed to the use of a system accessing electronic data presented in a traditional format? What are potential disadvantages - particularly with the current state of the system in relying on companies voluntarily providing optional information in the XBRL tagged format?

Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island

"Language of Love for Mutual Funds: XBRL Computer Code Simplifies Investors' Search for Data On Returns, Costs, Risks," by Daisy Maxey, The Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2007; Page C11 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118825363850710278.html?mod=djem_jiewr_ac

Mutual-fund investors whose eyes glaze over when they read the term "XBRL" may want to keep reading: The computer language may soon make it easier to compare funds' strategies, costs, risks and returns.

Mutual funds last week began providing information related to their risks and returns to the Securities and Exchange Commission using XBRL, a software language used to label filings with standard codes. These codes make it simple to pull specific bits of data out of long, hard-to-search filings. (XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language.)

Longer term, the effort may spur online-data providers to develop tools for investors to easily analyze and compare mutual funds, resulting in a more competitive investment-management industry.

Years in the Making

In April 2005, public companies began voluntarily submitting interactive-data documents as exhibits to reports and other filings with the SEC. The mutual-fund submissions are an extension of that program.

Among the first mutual funds to participate in the program are Allegiant Advantage Fund, American Funds' Europacific Growth Fund, Mulhenkamp Fund and Vanguard 500 Index Fund.

The coding pulls out data on funds' investment objectives, strategies, risks, costs and historical performance. "That's the kernel which we suspect most investors are interested in," said John Heine, a spokesman for the SEC.

To get an idea of what may soon be available, investors can see submissions from publicly traded companies through an interactive viewer available through the SEC's public Web site (www.sec.gov). Click on "interactive data," choose "Interactive Financial Report Viewer," and then go to "XBRL Web application."

More Tweaks to Come

Risk and return information on mutual funds can't be seen through the viewer, and there's no way to easily compare funds yet, but the SEC is considering integrating the fund information into a viewer.

"Millions of retail investors rely on mutual funds to finance their retirement, health care, education and other financial needs, so shopping for the right fund shouldn't be a needlessly time-consuming and frustrating exercise," SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said in a news release. With the new tools, "investors will be able to comparison-shop among thousands of funds at the click of a mouse. This is a potentially rich new source of investing information for retail investors who need it most."

Jack Kunkle, an analyst with Muhlenkamp & Co. in Wexford, Pa., said he envisions many uses for the newly coded data. For example, the firm's customer-service representatives now research other mutual funds for their shareholders.

"Instead of having to go through big, long documents, this can easily compare one fund to another," he said.

Among the nation's biggest mutual-fund companies, Vanguard, of Valley Forge, Pa., could make additional submissions for funds as the SEC pilot program continues, but the firm has no plans to do so now, said spokeswoman Amy Chain.

"We think it's a powerful tool for mutual-fund investors. More than 80% of our client interactions take place online," she said.

Fidelity Investments is actively looking at the XBRL voluntary program, but Sophie Launay, a spokeswoman for the Boston-based fund company, said "it's too early to discuss specific plans."

Bob Jensen's video tutorials on XBRL are at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/

Question
Is a major overhaul of accounting standards on the way?
Hint
There may no longer be the tried and untrusted earnings per share number to report!
Comment
It would be interesting to see a documentation of the academic research, if any, that the FASB relied upon to commence this blockbuster initiative. I recommend that some astute researcher commence to probe into the thinking behind this proposal.

"Profit as We Know It Could Be Lost With New Accounting Statements," by David Reilly, The Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2007; Page A1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117893520139500814.html?mod=DAT

Pretty soon the bottom line may not be, well, the bottom line.

In coming months, accounting-rule makers are planning to unveil a draft plan to rework financial statements, the bedrock data that millions of investors use every day when deciding whether to buy or sell stocks, bonds and other financial instruments. One possible result: the elimination of what today is known as net income or net profit, the bottom-line figure showing what is left after expenses have been met and taxes paid.

It is the item many investors look to as a key gauge of corporate performance and one measure used to determine executive compensation. In its place, investors might find a number of profit figures that correspond to different corporate activities such as business operations, financing and investing.

Another possible radical change in the works: assets and liabilities may no longer be separate categories on the balance sheet, or fall to the left and right side in the classic format taught in introductory accounting classes.

ACCOUNTING OVERHAUL

Get a glimpse of what new financial statements could look like, according to an early draft recently provided by the Financial Accounting Standards Board to one of its advisory groups.The overhaul could mark one of the most drastic changes to accounting and financial reporting since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, when companies began publishing financial information as they sought outside capital. The move is being undertaken by accounting-rule makers in the U.S. and internationally, and ultimately could affect companies and investors around the world.

The project is aimed at providing investors with more telling information and has come about as rule makers work to one day come up with a common, global set of accounting standards. If adopted, the changes will likely force every accounting textbook to be rewritten and anyone who uses accounting -- from clerks to chief executives -- to relearn how to compile and analyze information that shows what is happening in a business.

This is likely to come as a shock, even if many investors and executives acknowledge that net income has flaws. "If there was no bottom line, I'd want to have a sense of what other indicators I ought to be looking at to get a sense of the comprehensive health of the company," says Katrina Presti, a part-time independent health-care contractor and stay-at-home mom who is part of a 12-woman investment club in Pueblo, Colo. "Net income might be a false indicator, but what would I look at if it goes away?"

The effort to redo financial statements reflects changes in who uses them and for what purposes. Financial statements were originally crafted with bankers and lenders in mind. Their biggest question: Is the business solvent and what's left if it fails? Stock investors care more about a business's current and future profits, so the net-income line takes on added significance for them.

Indeed, that single profit number, particularly when it is divided by the number of shares outstanding, provides the most popular measure of a company's valuation: the price-to-earnings ratio. A company that trades at $10 a share, and which has net profit of $1 a share, has a P/E of 10.

But giving that much power to one number has long been a recipe for fraud and stock-market excesses. Many major accounting scandals earlier this decade centered on manipulation of net income. The stock-market bubble of the 1990s was largely based on investors' assumption that net profit for stocks would grow rapidly for years to come. And the game of beating a quarterly earnings number became a distraction or worse for companies' managers and investors. Obviously it isn't known whether the new format would cut down on attempts to game the numbers, but companies would have to give a more detailed breakdown of what is going on.

The goal of the accounting-rule makers is to better reflect how businesses are actually run and divert attention from the one number. "I know the world likes single bottom-line numbers and all of that, but complicated businesses are hard to translate into just one number," says Robert Herz, chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the U.S. rule-making body that is one of several groups working on the changes.

At the same time, public companies today are more global than local, and as likely to be involved in services or lines of business that involve intellectual property such as software rather than the plants and equipment that defined the manufacturing age. "The income statement today looks a lot like it did when I started out in this profession," says William Parrett, the retiring CEO of accounting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, who started as a junior accountant in 1967. "But the kind of information that goes into it is completely different."

Along the way, figures such as net income have become muddied. That is in part because more and more of the items used to calculate net profit are based on management estimates, such as the value of items that don't trade in active markets and the direction of interest rates. Also, over the years rule makers agreed to corporate demands to account for some things, such as day-to-day changes in the value of pension plans or financial instruments used to protect against changes in interest rates, in ways that keep them from causing swings in net income.

Rule makers hope reformatting financial statements will address some of these issues, while giving investors more information about what is happening in different parts of a business to better assess its value. The project is being managed jointly by the FASB in the U.S. and the London-based International Accounting Standards Board, and involves accounting bodies in Japan, other parts of Asia and individual European nations.

The entire process of adopting the revised approach could take a few years to play out, so much could yet change. Plus, once rule makers adopt the changes, they would have to be ratified by regulatory authorities, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission in the U.S. and the European Commission in Europe, before public companies would be required to follow them.

As a first step, rule makers expect later this year to publish a document outlining their preliminary views on what new form financial statements might take. But already they have given hints of what's in store. In March, the FASB provided draft, new financial statements at the end of a 32-page handout for members of an advisory group. (See an example.)

Although likely to change, this preview showed an income statement that has separate segments for the company's operating business, its financing activities, investing activities and tax payments. Each area has an income subtotal for that particular segment.

There is also a "total comprehensive income" category that is wider ranging than net profit as it is known today, and so wouldn't be directly comparable. That is because this total would likely include gains and losses now kept in other parts of the financial statements. These include some currency fluctuations and changes in the value of financial instruments used to hedge against other items.

Comprehensive income could also eventually include short-term changes in the value of corporate pension plans, which currently are smoothed out over a number of years. As a result, comprehensive income could be a lot more difficult to predict and could be volatile from quarter to quarter or year to year.

As for the balance sheet, the new version would group assets and liabilities together according to similar categories of operating, investing and financing activities, although it does provide a section for shareholders equity. Currently, a balance sheet is broken down between assets and liabilities, rather than by operating categories.

Such drastic change isn't likely to happen without a fight. Efforts to bring now-excluded figures into the income statement could prompt battles with companies that fear their profit will be subject to big swings. Companies may also balk at the expense involved.

"The cost of this change could be monumental," says Gary John Previts, an accounting professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. "All the textbooks are going to have to change, every contract and every bank arrangement will have to change." Investors in Europe and Asia, meanwhile, have opposed the idea of dropping net profit as it appears today, David Tweedie, the IASB's chairman, said in an interview earlier this year.

Analysts in the London office of UBS AG recently published a report arguing this very point -- that even if net income is a "simplistic measure," that doesn't mean it isn't a valid "starting point in valuation" and that "its widespread use is justification enough for its retention."

Such opposition doesn't surprise many accounting experts. Net income is "the basis for bonuses and judgments about what a company's stock is worth," says Stephen A. Zeff, an accounting professor at Rice University. "I just don't know what the markets would do if companies stopped reporting a bottom line somewhere." In the U.S., professional investors and analysts have taken a more nuanced view, perhaps because the manipulation of numbers was more pronounced in U.S. markets.

That said, net profit has been around for some time. The income statement in use today, along with the balance sheet, generally dates to the 1940s when the SEC laid out regulations on financial disclosure. But many companies have included net profit in one form or another since the 1800s.

In its fourth annual report, General Electric Co. provided investors with a consolidated balance sheet and consolidated profit-and-loss account for the year ended Jan. 31, 1896. The company, whose board at the time included Thomas Edison, generated "profit of the year" -- what today would be called net income or net profit -- of $1,388,967.46.

For the moment, net profit will probably exist in some form, although its days are likely numbered. "We've decided in the interim to keep a net-income subtotal, but that's all up for discussion," the FASB's Mr. Herz says.

May 14, 2007 reply from Paul Polinski [paulp_is@YAHOO.COM]

Bob:
If XBRL is on its way to becoming mandatory in a couple of years, as Chairman Cox seems to indicate, this will not really matter.

As you likely know, one of the most important features of XBRL data is that it is presentation-independent. Although filed XBRL statements will specify a default rendering (display) format and set of measurements (which the FASB may mandate through this project), the analysis tools already under development will allow users to easily override this default. They may design whatever format, and specify whatever measures, they wish to perform their analyses. They could even choose to reformat the data into "legacy" financial statements.

The biggest impact the FASB's project may ultimately have is as a normative statement about how data across financial statements should be used.

May 15, 2007 reply from Zane Swanson [zswanson@EMPORIA.EDU]

Analysts currently reformat financial statement information to identify value investment or arbitrage opportunities. One advantage of XBRL is that it potentially can improve the comparability between alternative company investments because everyone will use the same common data dictionary (taxonomy). Another advantage is the minimization (elimination) of rekeying data to do analyses which frees up additional time to actually do evaluations. I would suggest the development of presentation formats should focus on improving the ability of uninformed investors to understand their investments ( a la the AICPA effort to improve financial literacy) because then the market will broaden, become more efficient and hopefully make better allocation of scare resources.

Zane Swanson

May 15, 2007 reply from James Richards [jdrozwa@IINET.NET.AU]

Possibly another advantage of XBRL is that you can create any presentation format you want by creating your own presentation and/or calculation linkbase(s). You do not have to use the relationships provided by the taxonomy author; you can create one for your own needs. What you cannot change is the underlying schema file where the concepts are defined.

Jim Richards

December 10, 2006 message from Saeed Roohani [sroohani@COX.NET]

In his speech at the 14th XBRL International Conference, Chairman Cox talked about Global XBRL Academic Competition:

See below and the link for your information.

And I should point out that not only can XBRL help reduce errors in the first place, but it can also help detect them after they occur. Here's an interesting example of how that might work. Just this year, a group of students at Emporia State University in Kansas won the Sixth Global XBRL Academic Competition at Bryant University by creating a software application that continuously identifies tagged transactions which should come to the attention of internal or external auditors. It's not hard to imagine that in the very near future, companies of all kinds will be able to rely on interactive data to flag anomalous data and fix accounting errors in real time

Speech by SEC Chairman: The Promise of Interactive Data by Chairman Christopher Cox U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 14th International XBRL Conference Philadelphia, Pennsylvania December 5, 2006

http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/2006/spch120506cc.htm

Saeed Roohani
Bryant University

"AICPA Brings XBRL Closer to Reporting Improvement Effort," AccountingWeb, June 21, 2006 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=102277

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ (AICPA) merger of the management of its XBRL development and Enhanced Business Reporting (EBR) initiatives may be more than just a reshuffling of operational hierarchy. It has set the table for two formerly separate efforts to help each other accomplish their intertwined missions, which both involve bringing business reporting into the 21st Century.

The AICPA has moved the XBRL and EBR Consortium management efforts under a single assurance services management team, and appointed Amy Pawlicki, an assurance and advisory services director and its liaison to the EBR Consortium, to oversee the coordination of EBR and XBRL activities, and be the management team’s liaison to the institute’s Assurance Services Executive Committee.

The AICPA and several organizations whose operations are connected to financial reporting in 2004 founded an EBR Consortium to promote a business reporting model that combines a company’s current and past performance with an understanding of its future prospects versus the current reporting model'sreliance mainly on past performance records.

XBRL is a technology in which key elements of electronically-formatted business reports are tagged so that they can be immediately accessed and collated to meet the needs of the reports’ preparers and end users. The AICPA in 1998 organized a consortium of technology vendors and businesses that deal with financial reports to launch development of XBRL, and the effort has since blossomed into a worldwide movement with separate XBRL development consortia in the United States and more than a dozen other countries, and an XBRL International group.

The combined management appears to be a natural since the EBR Consortium and the XBRL development effort share some of the same founding members, the AICPA, Microsoft Corp. and PriceWaterhouse Coopers. And the business reporting company, PR Newswire is among those active in both efforts.

Moreover, the merger reflects the profession’s growing awareness that XBRL is needed to advance EBR’s ultimate mission of greater transparency in financial reports, and to meet current business realities. An Assurance Services Executive Committee draft white paper on reporting and assurance notes the current reporting model was adopted during the Industrial Age and is not designed “to complement the vast array of new business models that companies now follow in the Information/Knowledge Age.”

It further notes the current model “is limited by its focus on static, paper-based, summary-level reports, whereas technology has evolved” far beyond that. The paper makes a strong case that XBRL is in fact meeting all the demands of the new economy, such as making information available on demand, real-time and enabling users to “drill-down into underlying concepts, data and relevant resources.”

The research paper predicts that XBRL will someday become as ubiquitous in business reporting as bar coding is in product distribution. Separately, Peter J. Wallison, resident fellow in the American Enterprise Institute, writing in the "The New Republic" in December 2004, said the capabilities of XBRL can indeed help the EBR Consortium accomplish its mission.

Pawlicki says the combined management will make it easier for team members to recognize areas where XBRL and EBR overlap and move forward with development for both efforts. “We don’t need to keep two separate teams up to date and the one team can see the whole landscape and better respond.” she says.

Most immediately, Pawlicki says the combination could assist in the development of XBRL taxonomies (tagging systems) for Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) reporting and for key annual report parts such as Management’s Discussion and Analysis (MD&A).

Pawlicki will represent the AICPA at the XBRL consortium in the United States, and Arleen Thomas, senior vice president of member competency and development, will represent it at the XBRL International group. They take over for the AICPA’s former XBRL point person, Louis Matherne, who left the institute in April for the Information Systems Audit and Control Association

Pawlicki is also charged with making individual CPAs more aware of XBRL and how they can put it to use in their practices and for their clients. “That is one of the most important things I will do,” she says.

Still new to the position, she says a formal communications strategy for XBRL has not yet been developed. But she added that she expects XBRL to be featured more prominently at AICPA member meetings. Improvement there should not be hard, since the technology has been low-profile or invisible at most institute conferences and at state society conferences.

However, XBRL took center stage at the institute’s National Conference on Current SEC and PCAOB Developments late last year when Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Christopher Cox said that the technology “will shape the future” of business reporting. and "will do for business reporting what bar coding did for product distribution.”

XBRL has also been the subject of banking industry conferences since last October when regulators, led by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., began requiring banks to use XBRL in filing their periodic call reports into a national repository.

Still, market acceptance of XBRL is limited, which could be another issue for the AICPA’s EBR-XBRL management team. As of late May the SEC reported that just 20 companies had joined a voluntary XBRL reporting program it launched in January, and its first such voluntary program, begun in April, 2005, attracted only nine takers.

"SEC Chief Suggests Blogs for Disclosures," PhysOrg, November 7, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news82126753.html

In the first official communication posted to a blog by a chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox said he was intrigued by the idea of letting companies use Weblogs to disseminate important corporate information.

Cox has invited the chief executive of Sun Microsystems Inc., avid blogger Jonathan Schwartz, to talk to the agency about the idea of allowing companies to disclose significant financial information through blogs.

The SEC chief showed interest in Schwartz's recent request for blogs to be used as a way to expand investors' access to information. His response to Schwartz, posted on Sun's Web site on Friday, caught the attention of the online world and even sparked envy from a Wall Street Journal blog.

A growing number of major companies now publish corporate blogs or online diaries. The SEC position is that current regulations do allow for blogs, like news releases, regulatory filings, Web sites and Webcasts, to be used to disseminate companies' financial information, provided a particular blog reaches a broad audience.

A 2000 rule known as Regulation FD, for Fair Disclosure, ended a long-standing practice by forbidding companies from providing significant information to stock analysts and other Wall Street insiders ahead of the public. The rule requires the method or methods used to be "reasonably designed to provide broad, non-exclusionary distribution of the information to the public."

"The (SEC) encourages the use of Web sites as a source of information to the market and investors, and we welcome your offer to further discuss with us your views in this area," Cox told Schwartz in his posting on the CEO's blog. (He also sent Schwartz a letter by mail.)

Said Cox: "Assuming that the (SEC) were to embrace your suggestion that the 'widespread dissemination' requirement of Regulation FD can be satisfied through Web disclosure, among the questions that would need to be addressed is whether there exist effective means to guarantee that a corporation uses its Web site in ways that assure broad non-exclusionary access ..."

Cox has pushed several technology initiatives meant to give investors more useful and complete information about companies and mutual funds. His novel way of responding to Schwartz provoked jealousy on the part of The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog.

"We're jealous," lead writer Peter Lattman huffed Monday on the blog. "SEC Chairman Christopher Cox posted a comment on a blog. But not the Law Blog. ...

"Shameless plea to Chairman Cox: We've got a serious case of the Monday morning blues and it would turn our day around if you posted a comment on the Law Blog. Don't worry, we don't want your thoughts on Reg FD or hedge funds. Keep it light: Tell us about the last movie you saw. Your favorite book? Thanksgiving plans?"

In a Sept. 25 letter to Cox, Schwartz noted that Sun's Web site, which gets an average of nearly a million user hits a day, includes the blog that he writes as CEO and those of thousands of employees of the Silicon Valley server and software maker.

"My blog is syndicated across the Internet by use of RSS technology," Schwartz wrote. "Thus, its content is 'pushed' to subscribers. This Web site is a tremendous vehicle for the broad delivery of timely and robust information about our company. ...

"We encourage you to look to the Internet to achieve the (SEC's) objectives of greater investor access to information," he told Cox.

Schwartz's letter didn't specify how many people read his blog, as opposed to the Web site in general, so more data would be needed to determine whether it meets the criterion of broad distribution under the regulation, in the SEC's view.

Schwartz, who recently started publishing his blog in French and nine other languages, has said it attracts 50,000 viewers a month. For him, he says, it has become "the single most effective vehicle to communicate" with investors, journalists and analysts.

Thirty Fortune 500 companies are now publishing corporate blogs, nearly double the number in December 2005, according to the Fortune 500 Blogging Wiki, a collaborative tracking site. Technology companies such as Amazon.com Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. and Oracle Corp. were early adopters, but senior executives at big industrial companies like Boeing Co. and General Motors Corp. also have embraced the trend.

In its unfiltered form, blogging allows CEOs to bypass the public relations department, journalists and industry analysts and speak directly to the public. Few company blogs are written by the chief executives, however.

Jensen Comment
No mention is made of XBRL, but this will one day be an opportunity for XBRL tagged disclosures. The FASB is undertaking a study for development of XBRL tags for qualitative disclosures.

The Accountant’s Guide to XBRL

Among the videotapes that I donated to the University of Mississippi accountancy archives are tapes of some of the excellent XBRL updates over the years in CEP sessions of the American Accounting Association that were conducted by Roger Debreceny, Glen Gray, and Skip White.

June 21, 2006 message from Clinton White [whitec@lerner.udel.edu]

Bob

The Accountant’s Guide to XBRL

Isbn: 0977952509

www.skipwhite.com

The Accountant’s Guide to XBRL is now ready for shipping and I’m publishing it myself. It is based on the way I teach XBRL to my senior Accounting and MIS majors at the University of Delaware. It is priced at $25.00 and can be purchased through my Web site www.skipwhite.com. It is designed to be a supplemental text for any accounting course in which you want to add a module on XBRL. I cannot give away free copies but if you adopt it for your class I will gladly refund your purchase and shipping costs. In addition, I am setting up a secure educator’s Web site with notes, exercise explanations, solutions, additional exercises, and ppt slides.

Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you!

Skip

November 10, 2006 message from Saeed Roohani [sroohani@COX.NET]

This is a good demo to show application of continuous auditing

http://www.emporia.edu/business/newsdetail.php?newsID=26

The demo was the prize winner of 6th Global XBRL Academic Competition

2005-06 (www.XBRLeducation.com)

Other XBRL teaching cases/projects:

South America Unified Markets

http://www32.brinkster.com/xbrl2003/

user: SAUM

password : xbrl2003

InvestWise: Where investment forecasts are just a click away!

http://personal.bgsu.edu/~ilyak/xbrl

password is xbrl

Credit Analyzer

http://kelley.iu.edu/Norne/ (ID: admin, PASSWORD: xbrlpass)

Some related links:

http://www.kelley.iu.edu/sagp/news_items.cfm?newsid=15

http://www.iasb.org/xbrl/xbrl_team/profiles_where_are_they_now.html

http://www.lerner.udel.edu/accounting/FacultyPages/Geerts.HTML

http://www.rafware.it/ias/index.php?id=2489

=====================

Saeed Roohani
Bryant University

January 18, 2006 XBRL Updates sent by Roger Debreceny [roger@DEBRECENY.COM]

The XBRL US meeting is currently on in San Jose. The Chairman of the SEC spoke by video at the meeting. His remarks are at http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/spch011806cc.htm with the video at http://www.sec.gov/news/speech.shtml . There is much of interest in the speech that focuses on two important issues: resourcing taxonomy development ("... the development of taxonomies lacks resources. Believe it or not, the awesome global challenge of fashioning a new way for billions of people to exchange financial data is currently dependent on the success of one solitary man who labors in anonymity at XBRL-US: Brad Homer. Alone, except for volunteer help, he is writing the taxonomies upon which the entire interactive data enterprise will necessarily rely.") and mutual funds ("Almost immediately, I expect to see interactive data play a leading role in helping consumers analyze and compare mutual funds. The taxonomy development that is needed to make this a reality is well within our reach.")

Another relevant news item is at: http://tinyurl.com/d3yqx

Roger D

-- Roger Debreceny School of Accountancy College of Business Administration University of Hawai'i at Manoa 2404 Maile Way Honolulu, HI 96822, USA Office phone: +1 (808) 956 8545 Cell phone: +1 (808) 393 1352 Fax: +1 (808) 956 9888 roger(at)debreceny.com rogersd(at)hawaii.edu www.debreceny.com

December 6, 2005 message from Dennis Beresford [dberesfo@terry.uga.edu]

National Conference on Current SEC and PCAOB Developments. His talk is available at: http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/spch120505cc.htm

He had three main messages:

1. Accounting rules need to be simplified. "The accounting scandals that our nation and the world have now mostly weathered were made possible in part by the sheer complexity of the rules." "The sheer accretion of detail has, in time, led to one of the system's weaknesses - its extreme complexity. Convolution is now reducing its usefulness."

2. The concentration of auditing services in the Big 4 "quadropoly" is bad for the securities markets. The SEC will try to do more to encourage the use of medium size and smaller firms that receive good inspection reports from the PCAOB.

3. The SEC will continue to push XBRL. "The interactive data that this initiative will create will lead to vast improvements in the quality, timeliness, and usefulness of information that investors get about the companies they're investing in."

A very interesting talk - one that seems to promise a high level of cooperation with the accounting profession.

Denny

Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it is.
Wayne Gretsky as quoted by Jerry Trites at http://www.zorba.ca/

The above quotation is very important in financial reporting, because XBRL is where the puck is going.

October 2, 2006 message from Gerald Trites [gtrites@ZORBA.CA]

A new Blog for XBRL Canada is available at the following link: http://www.zorba.ca/xbrlblog.html. The blog is intended to provide a timely record of events relating to XBRL, particularly in Canada, and also other events of general interest. It also is a forum to enable members to bring events to the attention of others.

-------------------------
Gerald D Trites, FCA, CA*CISA/IT
Ph: 416-602-3931
Web Site: www.zorba.ca
E-Business Blog: www.zorba.ca/blog.html
XBRL Blog: www.zorba.ca/xbrlblog.html

Bob Jensen’s tutorials on XBRL are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm
I want to thank Rivet Software for sending me a copy of Drag and Tag. I haven't really learned how to use it yet, but I discovered that it puts a toolbar in your Excel spreadsheets such that you can import financial statements published in Excel (which some companies now provide online) and then proceed to add XBRL meta-tags under a chosen GAAP taxonomy such as International GAAP or U.S. GAAP.

Two Tutorial Videos (plus my older video) for Excel

XBRL is no longer something we only play with in academe. It is now available to investors around the world, although it may take a while for some companies to add the XBRL tags to their financial statements. Some things that are now being done in XBRL such as time graphs and ratio graphs can be done with things other than XBRL. What XBRL does, however, is make it possible to:

(1) Compare different companies in a Web browser

(2) Perform customized analyses if the XBRL statements are downloaded into Excel

(3) Conduct easy searches that do not yield thousands of unwanted and extraneous hits

Bob Jensen's New Video Tutorial on XBRL (about 30 minutes)
It's the XBRLdemos2005.wmv file at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/
But first read the following and watch the KOSDAQ video before watching the above video.

Question
What are the two most significant events in the history of accounting, financial reporting, and financial statement analysis?

Answers
Double Entry Bookkeeping and XBRL

The origins of double entry bookkeeping are unknown. It goes back over 100 years before Luca Pacioli made it famous by algebraically describing it in the world's first algebra book called Summa written in 1494. Pacioli's basic equation A=L+E simply shows how recorded asset values in total equal the double-entry sum of creditor liabilities plus owner equities in those assets. For over 500 years accounting disputes mainly lie in defining the A, L, and E concepts and measuring them in financial statements. Pacioli gave us the algebra without the crucial and operational definitions of terms. Bob Jensen's brief summary of the history of accounting is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm

XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language in XML that can now be interpreted by every Web browser such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer. In the future, virtually every all academic disciplines such as Chemistry, Physics, and History will probably develop their own taxonomies for XML reporting on the Web. Hence, we one day may have XCHEM, XPHYS, and XHIST eXtensible reporting languages.

Whereas the famous HTML tags on data are not extensible and are more or less fixed in scope and time, XML extensible meta-tags will become the world's most popular way of creating customized "meta-tags" that attach to virtually every piece of Web data and describe attributes of each piece of data. The history of data tags and meta-tags is briefly outlined at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm
I also highly recommend the XBRL history and news site at XBRL headquarters at http://www.xbrl.org/Home/
Also see http://www.w3.org/

I like to think of non-extensible tags that are pre-printed for the world to use. In the case of HTML, these are largely tags for screen formatting and hyperlinking. For example, when I add HTML tags to the number 212, the tags tell the browser how that number should appear on the screen. I could even make it link to some other Web page or position on this Web page. But the HTML tag alone cannot tell me the meaning of 212. To tag the meaning of 212, I have to have extensible tags that let me (or us) add customized tags that add meaning to the number 212 itself in an intended context. The development of a standard set of such tags in a given discipline is called taxonomy building. For over a decade, an XBRL standards group has been developing an XBRL taxonomy such that I can tag the number 212 to convey that it is a $212 million Allowance for Doubtful Accounts.

XBRL is a taxonomy for XML meta-tags to be placed on virtually every number in a set of financial statements. For over a decade, efforts have been made by huge companies and accounting firms to develop standardized XBRL tags for key taxonomies in accounting. These taxonomies may vary as to a particular set of accounting generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) such as International GAAP or US GAAP. Once a company or user selects which GAAP taxonomy to use, it's financial statements can be "marked up" with XBRL meta-tags that facilitate comparative financial statement analysis. Users may also take any set of financial statements and add tags for a chosen set of GAAP tags. For example, see Drag and Tag from Rivet Corporation --- http://www.rivetsoftware.com/
Also see http://www.xbrl.org/eu/CEBS-3/Rivet_Industry Day_Brussels_14 Sept 2005.pdf

Because adding XBRL meta-tags to a given set of financial statements is time consuming, most large companies are in the process of adding these tags to their own financial data so that investors will not have to do their own tagging. The major stock exchanges of the world are now urging companies to send in their financial reports marked up in XBRL. Soon they will require all listed companies to submit XBRL-tagged financial statements.

Bob Jensen's Old XBRL Video Tutorial called XBRLdemos.wmv
About four years ago (I can't remember exactly when) I prepared a XBRL tutorial on how to use XBRL in financial statement analysis. The tutorial itself was actually developed by NASDAQ, Microsoft, and PwC in a NMP partnership. NASDAQ selected 20 companies and marked up their financial statements in XBRL. Microsoft wrote a fancy Excel program to analyze those financial statements in Excel. PwC served up the data on the Web. This NMP tutorial was intended to have a short life since the plan was eventually to use XBRL directly in Web browsers without having to use Excel. Indeed, PwC no longer serves up this tutorial. Bob Jensen probably has the only recorded history of this NMP tutorial on video in the file XBRLdemos.wfm at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/

Bob Jensen's New 2005 XBRL Video Tutorial called XBRLdemos2005.wmf
XBRL is now marked up on many financial statements on the Web and can be used for financial statement analysis in Web browsers. I found a set of such statements for various (Star) companies on the Korean KOSDAQ stock exchange homepage.

Before looking at my new video, I want you to first view the KOSDAQ Camtasia video at http://www.ubmatrix.com/solutions/WebHelp/KOSDAQDemo.html

After viewing this video, you can then go to my new Camtasia 2005 video XBRLdemos2005.wmf file at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/

My new video is mainly a tutorial about how I learned to use the XBRL financial statements made available by KOSDAQ for actual use by investors in companies listed on the KOSDAQ stock exchange.

In particular, my new video shows how to perform the following steps at the KOSDAQ site.

First
Watch the http://www.ubmatrix.com/solutions/WebHelp/KOSDAQDemo.html

Second
Watch my XBRLdemos2005.wmv file at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/

The KOSDAQ homepage is at http://www.ubmatrix.com/home/default.asp

~~Go to~~ ~~http://km.krx.co.kr/~~
     You do not have to install the Korean language pack
     Note that it may take some time for the upper menu to appear
     Click on the English button in the upper right corner after the menu appears

Third
Go directly to http://english.kosdaq.com/
     Click on the "XBRL Service" on the right side of the screen
     Click on a company's logo (ignore any pop ups to install a language pack)
     If you do not see a graph on the left side of a company's report,
             click on the button/instruction below the graph's border
     After you see a graph,
             click on the various financial statement line items to the right of the graph
            (Your mouse pointer will now be a small bar graph)

Go to the bottom of the page and click on "Ratios"
     If your pointer is still a small graph,
             click on the ratios that you want to see in the graph

Go to the bottom of the page and click on "Comparison"
Options for comparisons are given (they are also demonstrated in my video)

Go to the bottom of the page and read about the Excel Analyzer
See what you can download if you really get interested in the analysis options

October 30, 2005 reply from Deborah Johnson [Finance@WeFightFraud.com]

I followed the instructions you plan to give your students for Monday and found a few bugs you might want to know about.

The Demos link at XBRL.org is not on the home page. They need to know that this site requires them to navigate to "Showcase" to find the Demo.

http://km.krx.co.kr/ selected English and then XBRL Services, then chose the company. The graph is only available if you agree to download and install additional software on your PC. If they do not have administrator rights, this is not going to be an option for your students. (say on college lab and classroom computers).

The company I selected, LG Micron, had an obvious defect in the financial data being presented for this demonstration. XBRL is clearly not going to minimize any human mistakes, and the printed financials will still have to be carefully scrutinized by management and the auditors. Do the math on the Trade Receivables at Net. Demerits for any student who doesn't find the error. If you go to the bottom of the table and select "Get these financials in XBRL" you may get an XML Parsing Error. This is probably a higher version of XMl required, and again the student would need administrator rights to upgrade the software or install patches and plug ins.

Regards,

Deborah Johnson

October 30, 2005 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Deborah,

I agree with all your points and thank you for providing some clarifications. With respect to needing administrative rights to view the graphs (say on college lab computers and on classroom computers), it behooves faculty to ask administrators to install the software that can be downloaded free by clicking below the graph frame for any company in the demo.

If students do not have administrative rights on a college lab or classroom computer, I guess this makes my video tutorial even more valuable since students can see what will happen if they try this on their own computers where they automatically have administrative rights.

Thanks,

Bob

Speech by SEC Chairman:
Remarks at the 12th XBRL International Conference
by Chairman Christopher Cox
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Tokyo, Japan November 7, 2005
http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/spch110705cc.htm

At the SEC, our XBRL Voluntary Program was launched earlier this year as a tentative first step. The program was designed to encourage all of the participants to help us assess the potential for using interactive data both within and outside the Commission.

For our registrants, it's an opportunity to explore the costs and benefits of using interactive data. They're helping us understand the impact of using XBRL on their financial reporting systems, and on their internal financial controls and processes. We're also learning how XBRL can help companies communicate with their shareholders and the markets generally.

In the months ahead, I expect that investors and analysts will continue to pilot the use of interactive data applications. That will help us assess how this new flexible format might help them to improve their own analyses and decisions.

For software providers and other technology providers, this is an opportunity to showcase the capabilities of XBRL and interactive data and tangibly demonstrate the impact to the aforementioned parties. For the SEC, this is our opportunity to assess how the use of interactive data can help us improve our internal review of information, and how it can help us make it available in more useful form to the public.

It's fitting that this 12th XBRL International Conference is taking place in Japan. After all, XBRL has already received significant support from the Japanese government. In fact, as many of you know, the Bank of Japan plans to implement a voluntary XBRL filing program for over 500 regulated entities, possibly as early as next January. In addition, the counterpart of the SEC in Japan -- the Financial Services Agency -- has already formed a committee to accelerate the use of XBRL in financial disclosure. The FSA anticipates introducing an XBRL-based filing system for financial statements in the near future. The SEC and the FSA have a bilateral Memorandum of Understanding that permits us to partner on issues such as this, and so I expect that Japan's experiences using XBRL will form an important part of our dialogue in the months ahead.

As we progress with the SEC's own assessment of interactive data, we will continue to work closely with all of you. Because of the leadership that you've shown over the past 5 years, we now stand on the threshold of some truly breathtaking changes in our global financial markets.

Continued in article

December 14, 2005 message from Gerald Trites [gtrites@GMAIL.COM]

The CICA's Information Technology Advisory Committee has released a new updated version of its publication "Audit and Control Implications of XBRL. It's available at the following link. Just scroll down to the white papers. The new version takes into account advnaces in XBRL since the original paper and also assurance related events such as the release of the XBRL Assurance Q&A by the PCAOB. The link is www.cica.ca/itac . It's also listed on the XBRL Blog noted below.

Jerry Trites

Gerald D Trites, CA*CISA/IT, FCA
PH 416-602-3931
Web Site: www.zorba.ca
E-Business Blog: www.zorba.ca/blog.html
XBRL Blog: www.zorba.ca/xbrlblog.html

"XBRL GL: More Than Reporting," AccountingWeb, September 2, 2005 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=101264

As powerful, and useful, as eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is for sharing information between organizations, there is more to business, and accounting than just reporting. There is also more to XBRL than just financial reporting taxonomies. In July, XBRL International release the latest version of XBRL GL, the General Ledger taxonomy which allows for more efficient handling of financial and business information within an organization. The XBRL GL taxonomy represents any information found in a chart of accounts, journal entries or historical transactions. Because it does not require a standardized chart of accounts it can help unite legacy charts of accounts to accounting detail across disparate systems together to create a standard chart of accounts in a cost effective way.

XBRL GL is the language of improved and more efficient communication between accountants. It provides a holistic approach by creating a standardized vocabulary for expressing information from the business documents that flow into financial and business reports. XBRL GL offers a standardized format for moving information between spreadsheets, accounting systems, and service providers both inside and outside the organization.

It offers several advantages over existing solutions, including:

Reporting Independence – meaning the information can be collected and represented through flexible links to XBRL for reporting purposes.
System Independence – meaning accounting software developers can create a single import/export routine for converting information to XBRL GL.
Consolidation – meaning information can be moved between systems or combined easily.
Flexibility – meaning the limitations of other approaches can be overcome for enhanced information exchange and reporting.

“It has always been a goal of XBRL to involve the entire Business Reporting Supply Chain,” states Eric E. Cohen, XBRL Global Technical Leader and Founding Chair of XBRL GL. “To me, that has meant standardizing the data that flows in from transactions and business events, and bridging between transactions and reporting (financial, tax, operational, statutory, etc.). That is the role of XBRL GL.”

New XBRL Blog

October 9, 2005 message from Gerald Trites [gtrites@zorba.ca]

Hi Bob,

Since you've shown an interest in my blogging efforts, I thought I'd let you know I started a blog on XBRL. I know there are a few others out there, but I am doing a lot of research on XBRL right now, and thought I'd run across some sources of interest to researchers. Since I just started it, there's not much there right now, but it will grow quickly. the ref is at http://www.zorba.ca/xbrlblog.html.

Hope all is well. Sorry we didn't get to have a chat in SF.

Jerry
Gerald D Trites, CA*CISA/IT, FCA
PH 902-867-5410 Cell 416-602-3931
Web Site: www.zorba.ca
E-Business Blog: www.zorba.ca/blog.html
XBRL Blog: www.zorba.ca/xbrlblog.html

New XBRL Products

November 7, 2005 message from Roger Debreceny [roger@DEBRECENY.COM]

Here are two product announcements about XBRL (I have cut out much of the sales chatter from the releases. Go to the respective web sites for more details). These releases are timed for the XBRL International meeting in Tokyo which starts today. I would not normally dispatch product releases to AECM but these seem of particular interest to the AECM community.

Roger D

RIVET™ SOFTWARE ANNOUNCES FREE XBRL VIEWER

New Dragon View™ and Dragon Tag™ Forms Released to Promote XBRL Adoption Through Functionality and Ease of Use

XBRL International Conference, Tokyo—November 7

Rivet’s Dragon Tag Forms creates XBRL Web forms while Dragon View provides robust XBRL viewing functionality and the ability to export XBRL documents into Microsoft Excel®. These products complement Rivet’s flagship XBRL markup product, Dragon Tag, the industry’s first easy to use Microsoft Office® -based solution for creating industry-standard XBRL documents. Rivet’s suite of XBRL products is purpose-built for accounting and finance professionals to mask the underlying complexity sometimes associated with XBRL adoption.

Dragon View, Dragon Tag Forms Extend Personal Productivity Capabilities Adoption of XBRL by governments and regulators the world over has placed an emphasis on new products geared towards working with and collecting XBRL information. Rivet’s Dragon View allows users to view XBRL taxonomies and instance documents with the ability to export the information to applications such as Microsoft Excel. Dragon View’s focus on simplicity provides “on the fly” and intelligent display options that make viewing an XBRL instance document just like reviewing the original report. Dragon View will be available in both a free and licensable version.

Dragon Tag Forms, an extension of Rivet's popular Dragon Tag offering, allows users to create Web forms based on format/layout information easily designed within Microsoft Excel. Dragon Tag Forms is designed for companies and regulatory agencies that are looking for a way to deploy XBRL-enabled Web page(s) for collecting customer data with automatic creation of XBRL instance documents.

Pricing and Availability Rivet will be showcasing the Dragon View and Dragon Tag Forms applications to customers and partners during the XBRL International Conference in Tokyo this week (November 7-10, 2005). A Preview release of Dragon View is currently available for download from the Rivet Web site (http://www.rivetsoftware.com/products), with final pricing and availability set at $295/ €259/ £179 and March 2006, respectively.

About Rivet Software Rivet Software is an innovator in developing effective and easy-to-use Financial Integrity Management applications. Based in Denver, Colorado, USA, Rivet Software is focused on addressing new worldwide technology requirements for the business reporting and accounting community. All Rivet Software products adhere to the emerging XBRL global reporting standard and work with the de facto standard desktop software, Microsoft Excel and Word. The company’s management team includes industry veterans, founding members of the XBRL community and past advisors to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). For additional information, please visit www.rivetsoftware.com.

CoreFiling Releases ReportDirect at the 12th XBRL International Conference

12th XBRL International Conference

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 6, 2005--CoreFiling Limited:

-- New PDF-based data collection solution to enable simple, accurate and instantly accepted electronic data collection for periodic financial reports needed by bankers, regulators and government agencies.

-- ReportDirect combines the simplicity and familiarity of PDF with the full power of XBRL.

CoreFiling Limited today announced the ReportDirect platform for electronic data collection. ReportDirect makes the design, deployment and ongoing collection of sophisticated information a process that can largely be managed by business experts.

ReportDirect represents a new way of thinking about data collection. It returns control to the business users who set policy and analyse the information. It makes secure electronic data collection simple, reliable and easy to manage, while harnessing the power of XBRL to revolutionise the application of rules and analysis to business information. Data providers can enter data manually or can import the data directly into the familiar PDF document. Recipients can control who submits the data, when it should arrive, and what quality checks should be applied along the way.

Unique TagTips(TM) provide users with a fully-rendered view of the underlying, structured, XBRL data. CoreFiling's patent-pending data binding techniques ensures that what is displayed on the page is what is held in XBRL format within the PDF Intelligent Document.

This revolution in electronic data collection is the fruit of a development partnership between CoreFiling and Adobe Systems, Inc. ReportDirect leverages the Adobe Intelligent Document Platform to allow the creation of pre-populated forms for interactive data collection and the secure deployment of PDF forms.

Key features

ReportDirect offers a turn-key, next generation solution that allows the design of forms, their distribution to nominated data providers and the receipt, validation and follow up of that data. Key features include:

-- Automated form construction from definitions in XBRL

-- Validation at the client before submission

-- Sophisticated scheduling and data requirements management.

-- Rapid deployment

-- Simple integration into standard business intelligence tools.

About CoreFiling

CoreFiling is a joint venture formed in early 2005 by Business Wire, the global leader in financial news distribution, and UK-based DecisionSoft, the world's premier XBRL components vendor. CoreFiling provides XBRL consulting services, data validation and enhanced data management to filers, regulators, exchanges and the financial community.

www.corefiling.com

A Closer Look at the First Mandatory E-filing System Using XBRL
The first mandatory e-filing system using XBRL will officially be launched on October 1. The system, known as the Call Report Modernization Project utilizes the Central Data Repository (CDR) a secure shared database containing the quarterly filings of the nation’s estimated 8,400 financial institutions. Call Reports collect the basic financial data from commercial banks in the form of balance sheets, income statements and supporting schedules. They are used to supervise and evaluate the financial condition of the institutions. The Call Report Modernization Project is intended to simplify and increase the transparency of the call report process. Currently, call report filings are comprised of 2,000 fields of data requiring 400 pages of instructions. Some 1,500 formulas are used to validate the data, which is used by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Reserve Board (FRB), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the public. The Federal Financial Institutions Examinations Council (FFIEC) estimates that more than 192,500 hours are spent compiling and filing call reports each year.
"A Closer Look at the First Mandatory E-filing System Using XBRL," AccountingWeb, September 1, 2005 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=101260

A great RSS feed on XBRL is at http://www.xbrlspy.com/

A nice summary of XBRL --- http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=11168

Talking Points XBRL IS WINNING SUPPORTERS

XBRL is an XML-based standard for analysis, exchange and reporting of financially oriented business information. Its initial use will be to meet mandates for financial reporting and analysis. Any organization that is familiar with XML is already much of the way there. Everything that needs to be done can be done outside the ERP and GL systems in middleware. The SEC is fueling interest in XBRL, although its official position is pointedly neutral. Using XBRL is voluntary, but that may change soon.

Meet the new addition to the XML family, XBRL. eXensible Business Reporting Language represents another derivative of XML and promises to streamline the integration of business reports and automate the corresponding financial and business analysis. Although the initial uses of XBRL focus on financial reports that must be sent to the FDIC and SEC, it can be applied to almost any category of business reporting. XBRL also is being used in Europe to meet financial reporting mandates.

“XBRL represents a significant advance, but don’t expect it to change things overnight,” says Robert Kugel, VP and research director at Ventana Research. To start, XBRL “makes it easier to deal with financial numbers,” he explains. Therefore, the initial uses of XBRL for mandated financial reporting and the accompanying analysis of those reports represent only the beginning of what the technology can do.

Ultimately, “XBRL has the potential to unleash a lot of creativity,” Kugel says. For example, it would enable the business analysis of the parties in a supply chain or the state of particular markets. These types of analysis are not practical today, as data has to be culled manually, normalized and re-input into spreadsheets or other analytical applications.

Adopting XBRL, however, shouldn’t be a burden. Any organization that is familiar with XML is already much of the way there. All that’s needed is to pick up the appropriate industry-specific schema and adopt some simple maintenance tools. Companies don’t even have to change their existing financial applications. “Virtually everything that needs to be done can be done outside the ERP and GL systems in middleware,” says Walter Hamscher, vice chair, XBRL International. And it doesn’t have to be expensive. “How much you spend depends on how much value you want,” Hamscher continues.

It’s not only the data Simply put, XBRL is an XML-based standard for the analysis, exchange and reporting of financially oriented business information. XBRL International ( www.XBRL.org ) freely licenses the XBRL standard and framework as a specification for structuring and representing information in business reports so it may be extracted and processed automatically by XBRL-aware applications.

Specifically, XBRL defines data-formatting conventions and vocabularies for marking up and describing business report data, such as sales or net assets. Like XML, it is tag based. Descriptions in the form of tags or labels are attached to the various pieces of business data. These tags describe the particular piece of data in terms of an agreed-upon vocabulary. That vocabulary is referred to as an XBRL taxonomy, the specific schema tags. The taxonomy performs a function similar to the document type definition used with XML, although it is more detailed than the DTD.

XBRL then employs XML’s XML Linking Language (XLink) capability to further extend the taxonomy definitions. “XBRL is not just data but semantics—about what the data means. XLink is how you specify the semantics,” says Hugh Wallis, an independent consultant for XBRL International.

Once the organization has the appropriate taxonomy, it can enable its reports for XBRL. From there, organizations can more easily use and share data from the reports within the organization and between organizations. XBRL-aware applications can take advantage of the high level of specificity and self-describing nature of the tags to automatically process the information for purposes of reporting and analysis. XBRL is independent of any hardware platform, software operating system, programming language or accounting standard, as noted in a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers report titled “XBRL: Improving Business Reporting Through Standardization.”

Proceed next to an Extended Overview of HTML

Year 2005 American Accounting Association Annual Meeting in San Francisco August 5-10, 2005
The AAA meetings were very good this year except for the first plenary session. Bravo to Tracie, Dee, and their helpers for great logistics. The Hilton did a great job. Bravo to Jane and her helpers for a great program.

I think Katherine's plenary (Tuesday) session on disclosures will be posted by the AAA. Katherine made reference to quite a lot of academic research. She might also make her PowerPoint file available at the FASB.

I hope the AAA will also post Denny's terrific luncheon speech. If not, I think Denny will share it in some way with all of us on the AECM.

A highlight of the meetings for me was the XBRL workshop conducted by Glen, Roger, and Skip. Eric Cohen also participated with a great demo of Rivet Software's Dragon Tag software which finally makes it possible to teach XBRL hands on to students.

Another highlight was the great debate between Katherine Schipper (for fair value accounting) versus more negative positions taken by Ross Watts and Zoe-Vanna Palmrose. All three did a great (actually unforgettable) job on Monday afternoon.

This 2005 AAA meeting set a record with nearly 2,700 registrations plus over 500 registered guests. This topped the previous record which was also set in San Francisco some years ago. Such a registration number is very high considering that there are only about 8,000 worldwide members of the AAA --- http://aaahq.org/about/financials/KeyIndicators8_31_04.PDF

I returned to Trinity University from New Hampshire today. Trinity is still seeking somebody to fill my chair (the Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Chair) after I retire in May 2006. Anyone interested in applying should contact Dan Walz at 210-999-7289 or dwalz@trinity.edu I am very grateful to have had the privilege to fill it for 24 years.

Life is good!

August 13, 2005 reply from Glen Gray [glen.gray@CSUN.EDU]

Gee, thanks for your kind words regarding our XBRL workshop.

For those who want to know more about XBRL, you should:

See XBRL cover story in August 2005 Journal of Accountancy at http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/aug2005/tie.htm

Visit http://www.xbrl.org -- includes general and technical information about XBRL

Check out the 5-years of XBRL abstracts at http://bryant2.bryant.edu/~xbrl/index.html

Review FAQs at http://xbrl.edgar-online.com/x/faqs/ , which cover a broad range of XBRL questions

Visit http://www.xbrlspy.org/ , a blog-like coverage of XBRL

Check out the free XBRL teaching materials that will be available (Sept 1) at www.eycarat.ku.edu/XBRLClassMaterials

August 3, 2005 message from Saeed Roohani

Updated XBRL Abstracts as of May 2005, references to 750 published articles! Next update will be in September 2005. http://bryant2.bryant.edu/~xbrl/index.html

ProQuest, Lexis-Nexis, and EBSCO Host are my sources for collecting XBRL articles. If I missed anything or you want me to include a specific article, please send me an e-mail.

-- Dr. Saeed Roohani
PricewaterhouseCoopers XBRL Fellow
PwC Accounting Careers Leadership Institute,
Co-director Global XBRL Academic Competition Program Chair
College of Business Bryant University
1150 Douglas Pike Smithfield, RI 02917

Question
What/who is FRAANK?

Answer
The following appears in the Journal of Information Systems, Vol. 19, Number 1, Spring 2005, pp. 1-18.

Financial Reporting and Auditing Agent
with Net Knowledge (FRAANK)
and eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)

Matthew Bovee
The University of Vermont

Alexander Kogan
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Kay Nelson
The Ohio State University

Rajendra P. Srivastava
The University of Kansas

Miklos A. Vasarhelyi
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

ABSTRACT: This paper describes the development and applications of FRAANK--Financial Reporting and Auditing Agent with New Knowledge. The prototype of FRAANK presented here provides automated access to, and understanding and integration of, rapidly changing financial information available from various sources on the Internet. In particular, FRAANK implements intelligent parsing to extract accounting numbers from natural-text financial statements available from the SEC EDGAR repository. FRAANK develops an "understanding" of the accounting numbers by means of matching the line-item labels to synonyms of tags in an XBRL taxonomy. As a result, FRAANK converts the consolidated balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows into XBRL-tagged format. Based on FRAANK, we propose an empirical approach toward the evaluation and improvement of XBRL taxonomies and for identifying and justifying needs for specialized taxonomies by assessing a taxonomy fit to the historical data, i.e., the quarterly and annual EDGAR filings. Using a test set of 10-K SEC filings, we evaluate FRAANK's performance by estimating its success rate in extracting and tagging the line items using the year 2000 C&I XBRL Taxonomy, Version 1. The evaluation results show that FRAANK is an advanced research prototype that can be useful in various practical applications. FRAANK also integrates the accounting numbers with other financial information publicly available on the Internet, such as timely stock quotes and analysts' forecasts of earnings, and calculates important financial ratios and other financial-analysis indicators.

"EDGAR Online, Business Objects Provide XBRL-Enabled Solutions," AccountingWeb, June 3, 2005 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=100968

AccountingWEB.com - Jun-3-2005 - EDGAR® Online®, Inc. and Business Objects announced on Wednesday, June 2, the signing of a new technology partnership in which the companies will conduct joint sales, marketing and development activities. The partnership provides an integrated solution enabling joint customers to easily and quickly obtain and use financial data. Customers of the new partnership will be able to access financial data in eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), a royalty free, open specification using XML-based data tags to describe financial data in business reports and databases.

EDGAR Online’s I-Metrix suite of SXBRL products enables financial analysts, auditors and investors to analyze financial statement data of all companies reporting financials to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The partnership agreement with Business Objects allows EDGAR Online to market its I-Metrix suite of XBRL products to the more than 30,000 customers worldwide of Business Objects.

“We are extremely pleased that Business Objects has chosen to work with EDGAR Online. The combination of Business Objects’ business intelligence platform and the EDGAR Online I Metrix suite of XBRL products will help our joint customers benefit from the access to standards-based corporate financial data,” says Susan Strausberg, EDGAR Online President and CEO.

Jon Dorrington, Business Objects’ vice president of alliances agrees, stating “The ability to access financial information is very important to our customers. The integration of our industry-leading BI platform with EDGAR Online’s I-Metrix suite will enable joint customers to more easily access and analyze their financial data to improve performance.”

June 6, 2005 message from Neal Hannon [nhannon@COX.NET]

When I introduce students to XML, I always send them to www.w3schools.com , and ask them to read the XML tutorial and take the 20 question quiz at the end of the session. In a lab environment, I allow the students to continue to take the quiz until they achieve a score of 100%. The session introduces the basic concepts of XML such as looking at XML as a method of applying context to content. The lab also serves as the bridge for discussions about other XML family markup languages, including XBRL.

For a general overview of XML, try XML: A Manager's Guide (2nd Edition) by Kevin Dick, available at amazon.com starting at just over $5.00 for the book in used condition. Regarding XBRL, there will be new books published by the end of this year that will be focused on bringing XBRL to the classroom. Watch XBRL-Public, a free yahoo group listserv (groups.yahoo.com) for announcements of courseware offerings.

XBRL Updates

May 3, 2005 reply from Roger Debreceny [roger@DEBRECENY.COM]

Many of the presentations from the 11th XBRL International Conference in Boston, Massachusetts have been uploaded to the XII website at http://www.xbrl.org/PastEvents/

"Lifting the Lid: Tech Seen Easing Financial Analysis," by Reuters, The New York Times, January 23, 2005 --- http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-column-lifting.html

The day when stock investors scan corporate results with computer software to make immediate buy-and-sell decisions may be close at hand.

After agonizingly slow progress, a computer language of business reporting called XBRL appears to be on the verge of wider adoption, its backers say. XBRL could have major implications on the speed at which hedge funds and other investors make trading decisions, making accounting shenanigans more readily apparent and potentially increasing stock price volatility.

XBRL, which stands for extensible business reporting language, is a language derived from the code of the World Wide Web. It consists of thousands of ``tags'' that correspond to items on financial reports, including balance sheets and income statements, making the filings understandable by a computer.

The technology has won support from major accounting firms and investor relations groups and has even gained a preliminary nod from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which has proposed a voluntary program for XBRL.Yet after five years of pushing, only a handful of companies have committed to publishing their results in XBRL. One reason may be a lack of easy-to-use tools for creating the language.

On Thursday, PR Newswire, a major distribution agency for corporate news releases in the United States, will try to address that issue, announcing a plan to offer its clients a tool to turn press releases written with Microsoft Office into XBRL in a matter of hours. It will also send links to XBRL documents along with the press releases it sends.

BusinessWire, another major press release publisher, has also made strides with XBRL, turning to a partnership with Edgar Online, a Web site for SEC filings.

PR Newswire Chief Operating Officer Dave Armon said his clients are eager to explore XBRL. ``A lot of the companies are looking for a way to break out and show that they're more transparent, or willing to try new things,'' he said.

Investor relations departments, which handle financial reporting, still tend to be slower adopters of technology. They have also been occupied with other initiatives, such as complying with Sarbanes-Oxley regulations, before taking on XBRL.

``This whole business reporting landscape is something that hasn't been touched technology-wise for decades,'' said Rob Blake, former XBRL manager for Microsoft Corp., which has been one of its biggest backers. ``All of us knew this wasn't going to happen overnight.''

Blake, now vice president of marketing for Rivet Software, the Denver-based software company partnering with PR Newswire, said he expects XBRL to be increasingly adopted over the next 12 to 18 months.

VOLUNTARY PROGRAM

Last September, the SEC proposed a voluntary plan to allow companies to submit financial filings using XBRL beginning with the 2004 calendar year-end reporting season.

The commission sought feedback on the proposal through Nov. 1. However, an SEC source said, ``approval of the plan is not imminent.'' A delay in approval would cast doubt on whether the original timeline for having the program in place for the 2004 annual report filing season will be met. For companies that close their books on Dec. 31, the deadline for filing an annual report, or Form 10-K, is mid-March.

The SEC has said it hopes the new format will enhance users' ability to search the filings database, extract and analyze data, perform financial comparisons within industries and speed up the commission's review of filings.

The new tagged data format also allows for the automatic exchange of financial information across various software platforms, including Web services, the SEC said in its September announcement.

Using a tagged financial filing, an analyst could easily transfer the data to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, for example, rather than having to read the data in text form or retype the information, according to XBRL advocates Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, PR Newswire and Reuters, which have joined together to promote the new technology.

KPMG International recommends that its clients adopt the new format, saying it benefits not just regulators but the reporting companies as well. In a 2004 report, the Big Four accounting firm said XBRL is becoming relatively simple and its use will allow companies to save time and money at the end of each reporting period.

In addition to KPMG, Ernst & Young LLP, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and Deloitte & Touche LLP submitted comments to the SEC in support of the voluntary XBRL filing plan.

The commission first began accepting filings regarding insider stock transactions in extensible markup language, from which XBRL is derived, in 2003.

November 23, 2004 message from Liv Watson [lwatson@EDGAR-ONLINE.COM]

My name is Liv Watson and the Vice President of XBRL Strategies here at EDGAR Online. Microsoft has chosen selective partners to develop the XBRL Add-in for Office. For more information please see announcement below.

On 17 November, during the 10th XBRL International Conference, Microsoft announced the intentions of several partners to build Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) solutions based on the Microsoft® Office System. Microsoft customers have long used Microsoft Office to create and consume documents as part of the business reporting process. XBRL, as a promising standard in this process, can help increase these customers’ productivity. Therefore Microsoft is pleased to work with these partners that recognize the value of building XBRL solutions on top of the Microsoft Office System.

These partners include Business Wire, Corporate Planning AG, EDGAR Online Inc., eReport, and Semansys Technologies B.V.

This announcement was published in a set of Frequently Asked Questions on www.microsoft.com - http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/newsroom/office/factsheets/11-17XBRLFAQ.asp

EDGAR Online announced last week the launch of their Add-in. (see below for more information). If you have any further questions I can be reached at 203 852 5703. Best regards,

Liv

November 3, 2004 message from neal hannon [nhannon@COX.NET]

If anyone would like a very current update on the status of XBRL, a visit to the SEC’s website will be enlightening. The SEC recently asked several probing questions about the health and stability of XBRL to the public. The comments from PwC, Ernst & Young, KPMG, Microsoft, IMA, FEI and the AAA are now posted on their website at http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/s73504.shtml . Reading the comments will give readers a most current view of the XBRL from the eyes of organizations poised to help companies voluntarily file with the SEC in XBRL. The SEC’s voluntary XBRL filing program will most likely begin with first quarter 2005 SEC filings. Stay Tuned!

Neal

Neal J. Hannon, CMA
University of Hartford; Barney School of Business
XBRL Editor, Strategic Finance Magazine

July 9, 2004 message from neal hannon [nhannon@COX.NET]

Here is an excerpt from a newsletter interview (see below for URL) published today featuring XBRL International’s president Louis Matherne.

Matherne: One of the smartest things we did when XBRL was first established was to go international. The adoption rate for any innovation can vary dramatically from country to country depending on the current infrastructure the innovation impacts, the condition of the economy, the regulatory environment, the culture and any number of other factors. In the case of XBRL, several markets have been more receptive to early adoption than others because of one or more of these factors.

In Europe we are seeing accelerated XBRL adoption in large measure because of convergence around international accounting standards and other initiatives driven by the European Commission. As evidence of this strong support, the European Commission just signed a €1 million contract with the XBRL in Europe Consortium, an affiliate of XBRL International, to accelerate the development and adoption of XBRL in the European Union. This grant will be used to help increasing awareness for XBRL in Europe and assist EU member state countries in starting local XBRL jurisdictions.

In the Asia/Pacific region, XBRL growth has been nothing short of exceptional. Culturally, standards such as XBRL find a very receptive audience in this region. Additionally, many of the current financial reporting system are several generations old and XBRL provides an opportunity to leapfrog to a modern reporting system.

XBRL adoption in the USA is a different matter. The USA has a significant investment in current generation financial reporting systems putting a drag on XBRL adoption relative to these other markets. Additionally, adoption of technology standards in the USA are more of a market driven idea than regulatory, which can take more time to gain acceptance. However, given the recent corporate scandals, XBRL is being recognized by USA companies as a powerful tool to improve business reporting. As more financial software vendors incorporate XBRL into their products, the use of XBRL in the USA will grow exponentially.

Another key lesson in the growth of the XBRL community is that adoption will be different in different markets around the world. An organization such as XBRL International cannot prescribe the "right way" for a country to adopt XBRL. This must come from within the country itself, driven by either regulatory or market forces.

To see the rest of the article, visit http://xbrl.edgar-online.com/x/newsletter/ and signup for the EDGAR-Online XBRL Newsletter.

Neal J. Hannon, CMA
Barney School of Business,
University of Hartford
XBRL Editor, Strategic Finance Magazine
Chief Correspondent, EDGAR-Online XBRL Newsletter

Microsoft has a Solution Showcase and Video at http://www.microsoft.com/office/showcase/xbrl/default.msp

Extended Overview and Tutorial on Metadata and XBRL
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm#XBRLexten

This is a Great Article on How We Can All Author and Use XBRL: The Future of Financial Reporting!
It is filled with references and links to applications.

"Tap Into XBRL’s Power the Easy Way," by Jeffrey W. Naumann, The Journal of Accountancy, May 3004, pp. 32-45 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/may2004/naumann.htm

XBRL—a specialized form of XML (extensible markup language)—is becoming more familiar to creators and users of electronic financial statements, but few people have actual hands-on experience with it. So, to bring XBRL to a wider business audience, Microsoft Corp. has released the Microsoft Office Tool for XBRL—a free, but important, enhancement—for the 2003 versions of Excel and Word. Along with the AICPA and more than 200 other organizations, Microsoft is a member of XBRL International Inc. (www.xbrl.org), a nonprofit group that promotes use of the extensible business reporting language to improve financial reporting.

This article explains how to obtain, install and use the tool to create an XBRL-compliant Microsoft Office file. It also explains what XBRL is and why it’s important to CPAs, their clients and employers (see “XBRL: A Business Reporting Standard” and “Why XBRL Matters”).

XBRL: A Business Reporting Standard To appreciate the tool’s usefulness, it’s important to have some understanding of XBRL, which is the XML-based standard for identifying—and improving the accuracy and electronic communication of—complex financial information. XBRL is a computer programming add-on that tags each segment of business information with an identification code or marker. XBRL International Inc., a nonprofit global consortium of more than 200 companies, associations—including the AICPA—and government agencies, has developed XBRL as a royalty-free, open software specification (www.xbrl.org/whatisxbrl). Version 2.1—the most current specification, or full description, of XBRL—is available for review and comment at the organization’s Web site, which also contains information on the different roles XBRL can play in various business contexts.

Users can download the enhancement from the Microsoft Web site (www.microsoft.com/office/solutions/xbrl) at no charge and easily install it. Immediately afterward, they can create or use worksheets and documents that employ XBRL to speed data input, ensure accuracy, eliminate ambiguity by specifying the precise nature of each data element and thus simplify the exchange of financial information. The tool benefits not just CPAs but all participants in the financial reporting process, including reporting entities, regulators, financial institutions, rating agencies and individual and institutional investors, and improves data sharing among the various systems—financial, tax and other—they use.

An example of the growing support for XBRL was the 10-year, $39 million contract the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. awarded in 2003 to Unisys Corp., which, with the assistance of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Microsoft Corp., EDGAR Online Inc. and other technology companies, will use XBRL and other tools to modernize and streamline federal bank regulators’ collection, processing and distribution of banks’ quarterly financial reports.

Why XBRL Matters
There are several reasons why CPAs—who often must follow relatively inflexible processes—could benefit from a new means of working with financial data. Among these motivations are their need for greater

Accuracy. Imprecise, inconsistent and unreliable values are common results of transferring data in ambiguous formats, such as those in which values are separated by commas or other characters. Because XBRL transcends the limitations of such data formats, it eliminates errors that occur during data re-entry and it minimizes the risk of losing “metadata,” or verbal descriptions of individual data elements.

Efficiency. Because XBRL data contained in one document or system can be easily shared with another without being rekeyed, exchanging information is swift, easy and error-free, resulting in immediate productivity improvements for all involved parties. In addition, XBRL can be used with software and data on any computer operating system or hardware equipment.

Transparency. Due to the consistency of their formatting and identification, XBRL data do not vary from the time and place of their creation to their eventual destination and use—whether it be public record or another purpose. XBRL therefore can help CPAs play a strong role in helping public companies satisfy the strict financial reporting obligations the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has imposed on them. Section 409 of the act requires companies to “disclose to the public on a rapid and current basis…information concerning material changes in the financial condition or operations of the issuer.” CPAs can provide a valuable service to their clients or employers by helping them implement XBRL-based reporting capabilities that automatically facilitate compliance by aggregating such information for review and distribution.

BE A CREATOR, A USER OR BOTH
The Microsoft Office Tool for XBRL enables users to both create and use documents formatted in XBRL. Many participants in the financial reporting process likely will employ one of these functions more often than the other. For example, producers of quarterly earnings reports will benefit from the tool’s creation functions, such as those used to characterize earnings data by “tagging” them with a contextual format—known as a taxonomy—that corresponds to a series of principles or definitions, such as U.S. GAAP. On the other hand, analysts of existing financial information will find it advantageous to use the tool to, for example, compare several of a company’s earnings statements. Of course, both capabilities are available to everyone using the tool.

Exhibit 1 depicts the current way—without XBRL—electronic financial information flows from an organization’s finance department to regulators, analysts, investors and other interested parties. Companies first submit plain-text financial reports to the SEC. They then convert those documents’ data into hypertext markup language (HTML) format and post them on the Web for public viewing. Finally, companies reconvert those data into various formats that enable investors and financial analysts to scrutinize key performance indicators and other criteria. This fragmented process is both labor-intensive and error-prone.

Continued at http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/may2004/naumann.htm

October 26, 2004 message from Saeed Roohani [sroohani@COX.NET]

For reference to XBRL Articles from 01/01/00 to 04/30/2004, please visit: http://bryant2.bryant.edu/~xbrl/XBRL_Articles.pdf There are four categories of articles in above site, I am currently updating references to XBRL articles for November 1, 2004, please let me know if you wish to have another category/information added to the list. In addition, if you think I missed something, please let me know too.

Also, please note that Intent to Submit Form deadline is November 5, 2004 for the Fifth Global XBRL Academic Competition 2004-05, http://bryant2.bryant.edu/~xbrl/index.html

Saeed Roohani
Bryant University

May 3, 2004 message from Neal Hannon [nhannon@COX.NET]

This just in from Microsoft. I have the tool on my PC and will be writing a short tutorial for upcoming seminars in Mass, RI, Florida and Chicago over the next few months.

The use of XBRL is taking off in three areas. First, governmental regulators around the globe are looking to the business reporting markup language. Projects are underway in the US, the UK, Japan, Australia, South Africa, and the Netherlands. Projects are proposed for Canada, South Africa, Singapore, Korea, Germany and a few others. Second, XBRL is very prominent in the adoption of International Accounting Standards, scheduled for over 90 countries in 2005. XBRL has the power to automatically translate language and currency. Third, internal projects are underway to convert corporate data into XML to feed business performance reporting into balanced scorecards and strategy maps. See the web sites of Cognos.com and ipedo.com for verification. In addition, the 4th quarter will see mandatory XBRL reporting for banks sending Call Report information to the FDIC. (for more information on this project, visit http://www.ffiec.gov/find/ for more information.

In short, XBRL will soon be a major part of our thinking about all financial reporting, both externally and internally

for companies around the globe.

See http://nerc.imanet.org for information on the May 21 seminar in Worcester.

Neal J. Hannon, CMA

XBRL Editor, Strategic Finance Magazine

University of Hartford (860) 768-5810

(401) 769-3802 (Home Office)

From: Rob Blake [mailto:robblake@microsoft.com]
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 3:33 PM
To: xbrl-int@yahoogroups.com; XBRL-US@yahoogroups.com
Cc: Jon Clemens
Subject: [XBRL-US] Microsoft Office Tool for XBRL Prototype Now Available!

I’m pleased to announce the availability of the Microsoft Office Tool for XBRL Prototype, an update to the XBR add-in for Microsoft Office that we released to the XBRL community in November 2003 at the XBRL International Conference in Seattle . The primary site for learning more about the application can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/office/solutions/xbrl/default.mspx. This site also contains instructions on how to access and download the application, which can be found freely available on Microsoft’s BetaPlace site at http://beta.microsoft.com.

The Microsoft Office Tool for XBRL can be used with Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003, specifically Microsoft Office Word 2003 and Microsoft Office Excel 2003, to create and analyze documents in XBRL format. It builds upon the November release by adding new and enhanced functionality including more complete Context support as well as new support for label roles and multiple languages. The prototype is an application that Microsoft hopes will facilitate feedback from customers and partners about the XBRL needs in the market. Upon hearing that feedback, Microsoft will make a determination on how best to deliver any follow-on to the prototype to most closely match the market’s needs.

Any questions or comments on the Microsoft Office Tool for XBRL should be directed to Jon Clemens (