How are XBRL taxonomies identified by XBRL instance documents?
An XBRL taxonomy is made up from a set of XML documents. The core taxonomy document provides simple XLinks to the supporting linkbases. Thus the core XML Schema taxonomy document and the supporting linkbases can be regarded as a single unit – you get the core document and you can expect to find the supporting linkbases. Instance documents then only need to identify the core XML Schema taxonomy document or documents that defined the concepts that they report. They do this identification using using XML namespaces. Each core XML Schema taxonomy is given a unique target namespace via its “targetNamespace” attribute. A namespace is insufficient information for an instance document processor to locate the supporting taxonomy documents.
An XBRL taxonomy is made up from a set of XML documents. The core taxonomy document provides simple XLinks to the supporting linkbases. Thus the core XML Schema taxonomy document and the supporting linkbases can be regarded as a single unit – you get the core document and you can expect to find the supporting linkbases. Instance documents then only need to identify the core XML Schema taxonomy document or documents that defined the concepts that they report. They do this identification using using XML namespaces. Each core XML Schema taxonomy is given a unique target namespace via its “targetNamespace” attribute. A namespace is insufficient information for an instance document processor to locate the supporting taxonomy documents.
Related Questions
- Do XLink linkbases that make up part of XBRL taxonomies need to be in separate documents from the core XML Schema document defining the concepts in the taxonomy?
- How can I unravel schemaLocation information in XBRL instance documents using XSLT?
- How are XBRL taxonomies identified by XBRL instance documents?
