Core Pattern

The core idea of XBRL is global open industry standard for information that is machine-interpretable that is also interpretable by humans (i.e. one version of information, usable by both humans and machines). This is achieved using the notion of the "information block".

The core pattern which describes what XBRL provides is explained in the graphic which I have provided below to which I have added some numbers to help me reference specific parts of  the graphic:

An "Information Block" is literally a block of information.  Not a block of data, a block of information.  There is a difference.  Data is not self aware. Information is self aware data. Information is data in context.  Data is interpretable only locally, for example within a specific software application. Information is interpretable globally.

For example, "241,086,000,000" is data.  But “assets for the consolidated legal entity Microsoft as 
of June 30, 2017 was $241,086,000,000 which is expressed in US dollars and rounded to 
the nearest millions of dollars"; that is information.

For a machine to be able to interpret information, that information needs to be in a form that the machine can read. XBRL is such a global open standard machine readable format.  But XBRL also has characteristics that make the machine interpretable also interpretable by a human.  You can represent the information one time and that information can be effectively interpreted by both a machine and a human.

How is that achieved?  I will use my "Hello World" example to explain. (To see the full capabilities of XBRL, see the Showcase of Capabilities)

If you click on this link, you will see an XML file that is machine interpretable using a global open standard, XBRL. Pretty hideous to a human.  But a machine can gobble up that stuff. That link represents #1 in the graphic, a block of information. Again, that is information, not data.  For each fact you know the amount, the currency, the period, the reporting economic entity, the number of decimal places you can trust, how the fact relates to other facts, and a lot more.  A human can "see" all that information by taking the machine interpretable information and transforming it into a human readable version of that same information.

For example, here is that same information rendered as PDF and HTML. Now, the PDF and HTML is machine readable, but it is not reliably machine interpretable.  But, you can also generate Inline XBRL from the raw XBRL, here is that Inline XBRL and I have taken a screen shot of that which you can see below for context:


Here is another software application which you can use to view the exact same information in the PDF, the HTML, and the Inline XBRL shown above; click here to view the information using that tool which looks like this:


But that is not exactly what we want; I am showing you various viewing tools, but we want a human to be able to EDIT that information, not just VIEW the information. The application shown below, which is Auditchain Luca Suite, can do that:


Not only can you edit the fact values of the report, you can also edit the report model itself which is shown in this screen shot:


The last two graphics shown above provide the capability to do #2 and #6 in the initial graphic of the core pattern.  It is hard to show every detail in this two dimensional blog post, but this should help you understand the key idea which is that you have ONE VERSION of information (and it is information, not just data) which can flow through a process.

There is one additional idea that is important to point out.  Because XBRL is a global open standard many different off-the-shelf software applications support the XBRL format.  Below you see a different application reading the exact same XBRL in #1, so this would be another version of #2 or #6. (Here is a more detailed look of the application you see below)


Here is another application which can show the exact same XBRL-based information, see the screen shot below or click here and explore the information block.


A few more tidbits of information about that "Information Block":
  1. Note that the initial graphic says "Information Block(s)".  I just showed one block of information in my Hello World example.  You could have any number of information blocks; for example the 10-K report for Microsoft submitted to the SEC had 192 information blocks.
  2. The Hello World example showed on logical information pattern, a roll up. Many more information patterns are supported including a roll forward, any arithmetic pattern really, variance, correcting errors, sets of information with no mathematical relationships, or just a block of text.  See the Showcase of Capabilities for more details.
  3. The Hello World example used only the core dimensions of entity, period, and concept.  But you can add any number of noncore dimensions.  See the PROOF example for more information.
  4. XBRL is "battle tested".  The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been using XBRL for about 15 years. There are over 210 projects around the world that make use of XBRL for millions and millions of reports.
  5. While I am using XBRL technical syntax; other technical syntax can be used to represent information blocks including RDF+OWL+SHACL (i.e. the Semantic Web Stack), Graph Query Language (a.k.a. labeled property graphs), PROLOG, or even SQL.
  6. While my examples pretty much all relate to financial reporting; information blocks can be used to represent both financial and nonfinancial information.  See this Lorem Ipsum example.
  7. While I believe the Seattle Method does the best job of explaining the notion of an "information block"; the XBRL International Open Information Model (OIM) implies that notion and OMG's Standard Business Report Model (SBRM) has a similar notion which they refer to as a "fact set".  This idea of an information block is in alignment between the Seattle Method, OIM, and SBRM.
Gall's Law states that a complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.  This principle emphasizes that effective complex systems develop from simpler, functional predecessors, and it is widely applied in fields like engineering and organizational design. The law suggests that starting with basic, operational systems and iteratively developing them is more effective than attempting to create a complex system from scratch.

The simple system is this core pattern, the information block. When a process is not 100% automatable (i.e. has both computable and non-computable aspects), humans and machines need to be able to work together effectively and collaboratively to perform work.

Additional Information:

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