The XII Standards Board (XSB) is seeking interested participants for the formation of an API Signature Task Force to survey market needs and lay the groundwork for developing publicly available Application Programming Interface(s) that are interoperable across different  platforms and programming languages.

Rationale:

As part of the Preserve-Promote-Participate initiative, the XSB proposes to provide standardised APIs for XBRL by providing blueprints in the form of API signatures. The XSB believes an XII issued   set of API signatures will provide more  consistency, interoperability and innovation in the software and tools used for XBRL-based projects and analytics.

The outcome of this initiative will likely be a set of API signatures addressing each of the following three categories:

• Mainstream programming languages, such as Java and C#.
• Relational databases and possibly Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM) repositories
• Web services via an appropriate scalable interface set, such as WSDL or REST

Providing standardised APIs offers the following benefits:

• Providing software developers with a programming  point of entry into XBRL
• Serving as a useful learning tool for developers wishing to incorporate XBRL
• Encouraging further innovation in software and analytics tools
• Enabling consistency across vendor tools and greater interoperability across vendor implementations of XBRL

Interested parties, including software architects and developers, XBRL practitioners and programme/project managers should contact the XSB via e-mail at xsb@xbrl.org. For more information on the Standard API Signatures Task Force click here.

Organizations and experts are invited to test a new format for reports based on the GRI Guidelines, as GRI releases its draft XBRL Taxonomy for public comment. The resulting ‘exposure draft’ will be available for public comment until 23 January 2012. Find the taxonomy and related documents here.

Produced in a joint project with Deloitte, the new GRI XBRL Taxonomy for providing sustainability data will help investors, auditors and analysts to access information in sustainability reports faster, and more simply.

Rina Levy, Senior ESG Analyst at Bloomberg and member of the Taxonomy Review Team, said: “This is a really exciting time for sustainability reporting – the new taxonomy will really open up the information in reports and help investors and analysts find the data they need much more quickly and easily.”

GRI and Deloitte have produced an XBRL taxonomy covering both the G3 Guidelines and GRI's latest G3.1 Guidelines. The GRI Taxonomy has already been reviewed by an expert team. 

According to Inés García-Pintos, Head of CSR and innovation at CECA and member of the Taxonomy Review Team, public feedback is vital. “This XBRL taxonomy is for everyone, so we need to make sure it is as suitable and as high quality as possible. We urge organizations that report using the GRI Guidelines to help us achieve this by testing out the taxonomy and giving feedback to GRI.”

During the comment period, participants can review the Taxonomy and related documentation, see how the taxonomy is applied, and test the taxonomy by applying it to their reports. Feedback on these aspects will help GRI improve the taxonomy.

“The new GRI Taxonomy will enable organizations to tag their sustainability data in reports,” said Cees de Boer, CFO at Deloitte Netherlands and board member at XBRL International.

“The GRI Taxonomy will help organizations improve the quality and integrity of their sustainability performance data. This will help investors, auditors and other report users to access and compare GRI data more quickly and easily without the need for excessive manual work.”

Pedro Faria, Technical Director at Carbon Disclosure Project and member of the Taxonomy Review Team, added: “XBRL will have an important role to play in increasing accessibility to climate change and sustainability data in a user friendly, globally recognized format. Critical to the success of this project is ensuring that key stakeholders are closely involved in testing the taxonomies as they develop. I would like to invite all organizations to test and use the new GRI taxonomy as an essential contribution for its development.”

For more information about the XBRL taxonomy project, please see https://www.globalreporting.org/reporting/reporting-support/xbrl/Pages/d....

(12 December, 2011) -- UPDATED -- The initial draft of the abstract model continues to be open for public comment. Please access the draft at: http://xbrl.org/Specification/abstractmodel-primary/PWD-2011-10-19/abstractmodel-primary-PWD-2011-10-19.html

Circulation of the Public Working Draft is unrestricted. This document is normative. Recipients are invited to submit comments to modelling-feedback@xbrl.org, and to submit notification of any relevant patent rights of which they are aware and provide supporting documentation.

The first draft of its Abstract Model was released at the 23rd XBRL International Conference in Montreal, Canada. The abstract model has been developed by XII’s Abstract Modelling Task Force (AMTF) as a means of establishing a common framework for communicating and understanding the XBRL technology. The abstract model provides a conceptual framework for understanding XBRL and gives developers a strong foundation for implementing XBRL solutions.

“The XSB continues to deliver against the strategic plan, including increased comparability, making XBRL easier to use, reducing the barriers to XBRL software development. The public working draft is a key component of that and we encourage market feedback”, said XSB Chair Conor O’Kelly.

The XII Abstract Model includes use case diagrams, class diagrams, object diagrams, and sequence diagrams and is a key component of Preserve Promote Participate, the strategic core vision developed by the XBRL Standards Board to continue the momentum of the XBRL standard.

More information can be found at http://xbrl.org/abstract-modelling-task-force

Abstract Modelling Sponsors:

The first issue of XII Instances, our monthly newsletter, is available in the Community Section of our website at xbrl.org/xbrl-news.