Seattle Method

The implementation approaches to representing something like digital accounting artifacts such as accounting working papers, audit working papers, financial statements, and financial analysis models and the base taxonomy metadata to support those artifacts  can be grouped into three technology architectures or stacks.  Those technology architecture stacks are: Semantic Web Stack (a.k.a. Semantic Web Layer Cake ): These are the standards published by the W3C. Labeled Property Graph (LPG) : Graph databases that use the ISO standard graph query language ( GQL ). Logic Programming : Includes ISO standard PROLOG , SQL, XBRL . Multiple technology architecture stacks is a fact of life.  Different enterprises have different preferences and therefore make different choices as to their desired technical implementation approaches.  That said, it is possible to transform between different implementation approaches.  The global open industry standard logical conceptualizat...

The triangle of meaning (a.k.a. triangle of reference ) was first introduced in  the book The Meaning of Meaning by Charles Kay Ogden and I. A. Richards which was published in 1923. The purpose of the triangle of meaning is to understand how to make communication reliable, repeatable, and interoperable. Basically the triangle of meaning is about precision of communication. There are many different versions of the triangle of meaning. Several other versions are mentioned under additional information below. Mainly these triangle of meaning representations are for domains such as linguistics, philosophy, and knowledge engineering and use specialized jargon to explain what they are trying to explain.  I find all of these too hard for the typical business professional to understand. And so, what I did was to take the best aspects of these other triangles of meaning and synthesize the information into something that I can understand and perhaps other business professionals can als...

Accounting is one of the strongest, oldest, most mature, and most rigorously enforced provenance preserving systems humans have ever build.  Every accounting system is a provenance machine for economic activity of an economic entity. Part of that provenance machine is the double-entry bookkeeping (a.k.a. double entry accounting) mathematical model. The first documented use of double-entry bookkeeping was in 1211 by a bank in Florence. This meant that for the first time, a trusted family member did not have to keep the books.   Around 1300 double-entry bookkeeping came of age. In 1494 during the Renaissance, Venetian mathematician and Franciscan friar Luca Pacioli   published a book, Summa de arithmetica, geometria. Proportioni et proportionalita (Sum of Arithmetic, Geometry, Proportion and Proportionality) which formally documented and standardized double-entry bookkeeping. Accounting records where economic events came from, documents who performed them, pres...

Accounting, the universal technology of accountability , is one of the most mature, enduring and robust information processing systems ever devised in human history. With over more than 7,000 years of incremental, iterative refinement; accounting has evolved into one of the most stable, resilient, and interoperable information systems ever developed.  The system includes accounting of business events related to financial transactions, the reporting of that financial information, assurance of that information in the form of an audit when deemed necessary, and analysis of that financial information. Accounting is grounded on a foundation of transparency, traceability , and reliability enabled by robust internal quality control. Its core mechanisms, most notably double entry bookkeeping and financial statement articulation , create a system in which every recorded business event is cross checked, internally validated, and mathematically constrained . These aspects are mechanical and ...

Epistemology is the study of the nature and sources of knowledge ; how we know what we think we know.  In business, there is the notion of "due diligence".  You would not sign a contract without performing adequate due diligence. Epistemology is similar to doing that same due diligence on your own thoughts and data to understand what you know and why you know it. Epistemology is a layer which governs how we distinguish between raw inputs (data), structured meaning (information), and trusted actionable knowledge. Imagine "data", "information", and "knowledge" in terms of building a house. Bricks, 2 by 4s, cement, rebar; that is the level of "data".  The raw materials used to build a house. "Unprocessed". Walls, doors,  windows,  roof, floor; that is the level of "information". Information is like the bricks, 2 by 4s, and cement arranged into the structures that make up the house. "Processed bricks,  2 by 4s, and...

The following are a set of reference reporting frameworks (a.k.a. reporting schemes, knowledge regimes) which helps those interested in understanding how to create an industrial strength reporting scheme using the Seattle Method to do so. Included with each reporting framework is a reference report which tests the entire reporting framework and a number of reports which helps one understand the notion of reporting styles. Each of these reference reporting frameworks has been rigorously tested. Each acts as would be expected per seven different fully compliant XBRL processors and three software applications which support the Seattle Method. Each of these reference working proof of concepts uses "https" as opposed to "http" where possible or necessary. You can look at these reporting frameworks represented in XBRL as a "blueprint" of a reporting framework (a.k.a. reporting scheme).  This blueprint provides important details (a.k.a. meaning) that are interpre...