Updated - RFP for XSLT style sheet for extracting XBRL 2.1 from HTML documents with embedded Inline XBRL.

Background:

XBRL International Inc. (XII) is soliciting proposals for the development of an XSLT style sheet to extract a valid XBRL 2.1 instance document from a well-formed HTML document with valid embedded Inline XBRL content. This implementation is intended to be an example of a conformant implementation and will be made available as an open source project upon successful completion.

While the original RFP specified XSLT 1.0, XII has decided that proposals using XSLT 2.0 will also be acceptable.

For the past year, XII has been developing a specification for the embedding of XBRL fragments into an HTML document. The objective of this specification is to enable the production of documents that can be viewed in a browser while making use of XBRL tags that can be processed automatically by consuming applications. This specification defines the syntax for such documents and how the syntax maps to an XBRL instance. This specification has been released as a Candidate Recommendation and can be found at http://www.xbrl.org/SpecCRs/. A conformance suite, including a normative schema as referenced in the specification, is also available for this specification.

XII wishes to make a reference implementation available to the public for the extraction of XBRL 2.1 from HTML documents that contain Inline XBRL content.

In order to support this work effort, XII wishes to contract the development and testing of an XSLT style sheet to extract and create XBRL 2.1 instance documents from well-formed HTML documents that contain Inline XBRL.

Scope:

XII will own all the rights to the software resulting from this contract. Upon successful completion of the project, XII will make all the code resulting from the project available as an open source project under the Apache License 2.0 http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.

The contract will be to provide XII with technical services to plan, develop, test and document an XSLT style sheet to extract XBRL documents in accordance with the Inline XBRL specification and its accompanying conformance suite. Since the XSLT style sheet is expected to generate valid XBRL 2.1 documents, the software will have the following requirements:

• The source code for this tool will be made freely available to the public for integration into third-party tools under Apache Licence 2.0.
• The tool must handle taxonomies that include multiple namespaces.
• The tool must pass the Inline XBRL conformance suite tests.
• The tool must not include code or libraries that do not comply with Apache License 2.0.
• The tool must be platform independent.
• The tool must be able to extract Inline XBRL content in its entirety from an Inline XBRL valid source HTML document and create a valid XBRL 2.1 document.
• The tool must identify any deviation from the Inline XBRL specification that is found in any document that it is processing.

In the above, please note the following clarifications:

1. the word “tool” refers to the XSLT style sheet(s) to be provided
2. solutions that involve more than one XSLT style sheet that work in conjunction with each other are acceptable – for example one style sheet (or a set of related stylesheets) that checks the input as valid Inline XBRL and identifies any deviation from the specification and a separate one (or set) that assumes valid input and produces valid output would be an acceptable solution.

Although the contractor will need to incorporate testing plans with one or more XBRL 2.1 validation engines, there is no requirement that the tool itself perform XBRL validation.

Industry best practices must be used in software design. The contractor must design an XSLT engine that is both efficient and effective for extracting the Inline XBRL content. It must be possible to easily update the tool to remain conformant with the Inline XBRL specification as it proceeds on the path to RECOMMENDATION status.

The contractor must track the progress of the Inline XBRL specification and identify any new requirements that are generated by modifications to the specification and/or conformance tests. Depending on the nature and complexity of such modifications XII may be prepared to modify the terms of the contract to reflect additional effort that might have been unanticipated. The proposer should include a statement in their proposal about how they would evaluate the need for any such modifications and in particular they should state to what extent support for any anticipated modifications to the specification and/or conformance tests is included in their price quote without the need for contract modification.

The proposer should include a statement of the level of maintenance support they will provide as part of the contract, subsequent to delivery of the product.

All responses should include a brief section (1-2 paragraphs) describing the proposer’s credentials for performing this work as well as a proposed timeline for delivery and all costs.

Please email your proposal to the Hugh Wallis, Director of Technical Standards, XBRL International Inc., at hughwallis@xbrl.org by 2008-12-17 (this extends the original date by 2 weeks).

Announced by:

Hugh Wallis

Director of Technical Standards, XBRL International Inc.