XBRL v other open specs

XBRL is uniquely positioned compared to other open specifications. It is optimized for the exchange of historical, archival business reporting data. It models data that is hierarchically arranged for drill-down and reported along dimensions of time, entiry and scenario (or context). And, it is independent of specifc industry, regulatory regime or level of detail.

Key themes distinguish XBRL from other standards in the financial arena:

• Reports, as distinct from transactions. A purchase order, or, more precisely, the sending and acceptance of a purchase order, is a transaction, transactions are the purpose of a whole host of standards from IFX, OFX, ebXML, ACORD and others.
• Performance data, as distinct from market data. market data tends to be ephemeral and real-time, with pricing being always crucial; performance data is archival and records the history of busness operations and their results. XBRL is about performance data.
• Entities as distinct from investment instruments. Equities are financial instruments whose underlying value is based on public company entities; an entity is the business itself. XBRL represent detail about entities - not only publicly traded companies, but any business or non-profit entity. Equities and other financial instruments are the subject matter of MDDL, FpML and others.
• Reporting metadata, as distinct from reporting metadata. Metadata - data about data - is, for the most part, data abouta document. XBRL defines how the individual numbers and facts inside the financial statements and similar documents relate to one another.

In general, XBRL business content can be embedded into any other standard that is related to transactions, market data, instruments, or document metadata. For example, if there were a standard ebXML business process for tax reportng, XBRL could be used as part part of the "payload" of the tax return itself, since it is used to present financial statement level data as well as the ledger of business transactions that are classified into different tax treatments.

XBRL and business performance reporting - makes a distinction between financial information reporting of a set of data and supporting text, versus the data in individual financial transactions. XBRL is focused on providing a rich, detailed, comprehensive standard for representing data used in business reporting.