XBRL International Dimensions
Specification released as Candidate Recommendation 4
20 July 2006
XBRL
International has updated its Dimensions 1.0 Specification, releasing Candidate
Recommendation 4. This contains mostly editorial and clarifying
text updates to Candidate Recommendation 3. No substantive changes to the
specification have been made, nor have the supporting schemas changed other updating
the copyright notices. It is anticipated that, unless significant issues
arise, this will be the final Candidate Recommendation prior to the
Specification achieving full Recommendation status.
The
Dimensions Specification is a modular, optional extension to the XBRL 2.1
Specification allowing XBRL taxonomy authors to define and restrict dimensional
information for instance authors to use in the segment and scenario elements of
the context element of XBRL instances.
A typical
example of its use is the ability to define regional and product dimensions for
basic fact elements such as sales – although its potential uses go far beyond
this simple case. The specification provides an important extension of
the ability of XBRL to represent easily and efficiently the dimensional
information which exists in business reporting. It offers a generalised
mechanism to define dimensional metadata and to reference it in XBRL
instances.
The
architecture of the Dimensions Specification is such that any XBRL artefacts
(instances and their Discoverable Taxonomy Sets) that conform to this
specification also conform to the XBRL 2.1 Specification. They may thus
be processed without error by any processor that is capable of correctly
processing XBRL artefacts, even if those processors are unaware of this modular
extension. It is also designed in such a way that it makes maximum use of
components of the XBRL 2.1 Specification so as to require a minimum amount of
retooling of applications for implementation.
It
satisfies XBRL International’s dimensional taxonomy requirements, which are
available on Specification
Requirements.
See the FAQ
for more information on the Dimensions Specification and Specifications –
Recommendations for the full Specification and supporting information.
XBRL
members may provide comments direct to the International Specification Working
Group. Non-members should send comments to spec@xbrl.org
or directly to the editors of the Specification.
Announced
by:
Hugh
Wallis
Director,
Standards Development
XBRL
International Inc.
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