XBRL International publishes Taxonomy Versioning Requirements

28 February 2006

XBRL International has published a Taxonomy Versioning Requirements document as a public working draft.

This document describes the business requirements for controlling the process of creating a new version of an existing taxonomy.  For example, taxonomy authors require standard mechanisms for communicating changes between versions of a taxonomy; instance creators need efficient means of understanding differences in taxonomy versions and analysing the possible impact on taxonomy extensions.

The document, fully titled ‘Taxonomy Life Cycle – Business Requirements for Versioning’, describes both functional and technical requirements and sets out a range of use cases for versioning. 

All public comments on the document are welcome and should be sent to domain@xbrl.org.  XBRL members may contribute directly to discussion on the Domain and Specification Working Groups.  The next stage in the XBRL development process is for the Specification Working Group to review the requirements in detail and propose appropriate responses, including the technical specification of any necessary versioning mechanisms.  

The Requirements Document is available http://www.xbrl.org/SpecRequirements/.

Announced by:

Peter Calvert

XBRL International

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