XBRL Taxonomy
Definition
XBRL Taxonomy. An XBRL Taxonomy is a classification system made up of a collection of taxonomy schemas and linkbases.
An XBRL Taxonomy defines metadata about what the facts mean and how they related to each other. It is the analog of a class specification in OOP, whereas an instance is a concrete object conforming to that taxonomy. A taxonomy may include formulae and validation rules. It is an electronic dictionary of business reporting elements used to report business data.
An XBRL taxonomy defines the following:
- Reporting data elements (pieces of information)
- Human language descriptions of the data elements
- Reference to the shared understanding or authoritative definition of the data elements
- Relationships between these data elements
- Business rules for validation across different data elements.
Structure
A taxonomy is composed of a XBRL Taxonomy Schema file or files (with extension .xsd) and relationships linkbase files (with extension .xml) directly referenced by that schema. The taxonomy schema files together with the relationships files define the concepts (elements) and schemas and relationships files altogether constitute a taxonomy.
