XBRL Taxonomy Schema

Definition

A XBRL Taxonomy Schema is an XML schema document (file). The schema must ultimately extend the XBRL instance schema document and typically extend other published XBRL schemas on the xbrl.org website.

Taxonomy schemas define Item and Tuple "concepts" using <xsd:element> elements.

Concepts provide names for a fact and indicate whether or not it is a tuple or an item, the XBRL Data Type (such as monetary, numeric, fractional, or textual), and potentially more metadata.

Items and Tuples can be regarded as "implementations" of concepts, or specific instances of a concept. A good analogy for those familiar with object oriented programming would be that Concepts are the classes and Items and Tuples are Object instances of those classes. This is the source of the use of the "XBRL instance" terminology. In addition to defining concepts, taxonomy schemas reference linkbase documents. Tuples instances are 1..n relationships with their parents; their metadata is simply the collection of their attributes.