1 Overview of XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB

This chapter introduces XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB. It covers these topics:

XBRL and XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB
Overview of XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB Features
Architecture

XBRL and XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB

XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is a language for the electronic communication of business and financial data. It is used as the format for business reporting around the world. XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB extends Oracle Database to serve as a comprehensive platform for managing XBRL content.

XBRL provides significant benefits in the preparation, analysis, and communication of business information. XBRL offers greater efficiency and improved accuracy and reliability for all those involved in supplying or using financial data. With growing adoption of XBRL, and with financial reports being generated on a regular basis, there is a growing volume of XBRL content to be stored, managed, and queried efficiently.

XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB helps you manage XBRL content. It lets you create multiple XBRL repositories and project XBRL data relationally or query it in various ways. It can help you improve operations on aggregated business and financial reports such as extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL); business intelligence (BI); and online analytical processing (OLAP).

Overview of XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB Features

XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB provides the following features.

Native database storage of XBRL data.
Database enforcement of integrity, based on XBRL rules.
Access to XBRL content using APIs and protocols, including WebDAV, which provides a files-and-folders view of content.
Ability to query XML data using XBRL semantics.
Relational representation of XBRL content. Ability to expose XBRL content to relational applications and SQL queries.
PL/SQL transforming procedures that generate derived XBRL views based on XBRL relational representations, network generation APIs, or dimensional information.
Scalable XBRL services: reports, network generation, transformations.
Online analysis based on XBRL dimensions, both explicit and typed.
Integration with Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition (OBIEE).

Architecture

This section describes the architecture of XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB.

XBRL Content Lifecycle

The typical lifecycle of XBRL content is depicted in Figure 1-1. XBRL lets you reuse and repurpose content across a variety of use cases. These use cases include filing organizations generating financial reports for submission, regulatory bodies validating submitted financial reports, and analysts aggregating and analyzing financial reports.

Figure 1-1 XBRL Content Lifecycle

Description of "Figure 1-1 XBRL Content Lifecycle"

The use cases have typically been handled by transforming the content to representations that are tailored for each use case (decomposed, relational forms; in-memory representations; and so on). XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB helps simplify the reuse of XBRL content across a variety of XBRL use cases and applications, by providing a single repository for XBRL content that preserves the XBRL representation and semantics while also providing services to address the full breadth of the use case requirements.

Architecture of XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB

The architecture of XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB is shown in Figure 1-2. XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB is composed of the following:

One or more back-end XBRL repositories based on Oracle Database, which provide XBRL storage and queryability with a set of XBRL-specific services
An external XBRL processing engine (XPE)

XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB integrates easily with Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) for analytics and with interactive development environments (IDEs) and design tools for creating and editing XBRL taxonomies.

Figure 1-2 Architecture of XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB

Description of "Figure 1-2 Architecture of XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB"

Components of XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB

This section provides an overview of the main components of XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB, which provide storage, querying, services, processing, integration with Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition (OBIEE), and an integrated taxonomy design environment.

XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB: Storage

XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB provides storage for XBRL content in Oracle Database, preserving its XML and document representations so that the content can be stored with minimal transformation. XBRL content is recognized at the time of ingestion and populates metadata structures that the database uses to enforce the integrity of the XBRL content and to provide alternative representational views of it.

XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB leverages Oracle XML DB to provide XML-based queryability and protocol access. You can use a range of APIs and protocols to access XBRL content, including Oracle OCI, JDBC, ODP.NET, and Web services (SOAP and REST). XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB also supports file-and-folder access to XBRL content, using WebDAV. Specialized indexing mechanisms expose live relational views of XBRL content, to support integration with relational applications and access using SQL. The traditional strengths of Oracle Database, including Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC), Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), and partitioning, can be brought to bear on XBRL content.

XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB: Querying

XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB stores XBRL content in its original XML representation. It leverages Oracle XML DB to provide XML-based processing directly on the documents as submitted and stored, for example, for exchange purposes.

XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB provides a relational representational view of your XBRL content, by exposing a third normal form logical data model with a set of base entities. Specialized indexing mechanisms are used to speed up these database views to make them comparable to a physical relational implementation.

The relational representation effectively provides ad-hoc queryability of your XBRL content. For example, you can query an instance document to find the 2010 total first-quarter revenue in an Oracle 10-k statement. Such a query does not reference taxonomies; it accesses only tables of instance documents.

The XBRL repository also provides XBRL representational views over your XBRL content by exposing a set of network APIs that allow reconstruction of XBRL networks from the underlying schemas, linkbases and instance documents. The XBRL networks are generated dynamically and provide real time views over the XBRL content. You can use the XBRL networks to answer as-filed queries such as listing the concepts under the category Total Revenue for US-GAAP in an order specified in the presentation linkbase.

Together, the XBRL content, the relational representation, and the network APIs serve as the operational store for relational applications that access the XBRL content. While much of XBRL query processing is based on querying the relational representation while referencing XBRL networks, XBRL analysis is based on derived views, such as dimensional fact tables, over the relational representation. To handle the full range of XBRL applications, XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB provides transforming packages to define derived entities.

XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB: Services

XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB provides services that facilitate scalable XBRL-based operations, including comparing and transforming XML documents. Such operations are designed to minimize loading of documents into memory.

XBRL Processing

XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB requires a third-party XBRL processing engine (XPE) that is deployed in either the client or the middle tier. The XPE must operate directly on XBRL content in the XBRL repository to reuse taxonomies and discover missing taxonomies.

Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition

XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB provides relational projection of XBRL data, for easy integration with Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition (OBIEE). OBIEE is not included with XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB; you must procure it separately. OBIEE is a powerful development environment that helps you perform a wide variety of analytical, charting, reporting, and publishing operations.