subject: How To Use Xbrl Taxonomy In Sec Xbrl Filing [print this page] An XBRL taxonomy is somewhat of a "vocabulary" or "dictionary" which describes data contained in an XBRL instance document. An XBRL Instance document is somewhat of a "database" of financial statement information issued by an entity.
These are few terms used in Taxonomy
Namespaces and Qnames (Qualified Names)
Namespaces are important concepts to understand in XML and XBRL. This is a very powerful feature which is not well explained and not fully implemented; it seems, by the W3C.
Namespaces
Namespaces basically solve the problem of two groups creating different taxonomies but use the same name within that taxonomy. When a namespace is added to an element, it makes that element unique, even when mixed with another taxonomy which has the same name. For example,
Example Explanation
P is used by HTML and could be used by other taxonomies
Namespace identifies that this is an html paragraph.
The following is sample syntax on how to indicate the namespace prefix for a namespace:
Qnames (Qualified Names)
Namespaces are also valid to use within the value of text. When you do so, you create what is called a qualified name. A qualified name or Qname is an element value which has a namespace within it. For example:Within this fragment, "NASDAQ:GPSI" is the value of the entity attribute. The "NASDAQ:" makes this value a Qname. "NASDAQ" is the value of the namespace prefix. The namespace prefix used in Qnames must be defined as a namespace prior to being used in the document, within an element or parent of the element containing the namespace prefix.
Other Important Terms
The following are some basic terms you should understand when working with XML:
a) Element
b) Attribute
c) Parent
d) Child
e) Node
f) Valid
g) DTD/XML Schema
h) Well-formed
Understanding Camel Case
Camel case is a widely accepted standard syntax for expressing XML and other things like programming code, database fields, etc. Camel case is widely used in Visual Basic, C++, and Java programming. XBRL specifies that XBRL syntax must be camel Case. XML is case sensitive. Rather than have some people represent information like "THIS_OR_THAT", and others like "This or that", and others like "thisorthat", we will all agree to express it like, "thisOrThat".
Note that XML is case sensitive. ThisOrThat, thisorthat, and THISORTHAT are different names to an XML parser.
In summary, the rules for Camel Case as used in XBRL are as follows:
a) All words begin with lower case
b) The first letter of each new word is capitalized
c) The "_" (underscore) or the "-" is not used to separate words, capitalization is.
