In recent months the focus of attention in relation to XBRL has been firmly on complying with regulatory demands – yet little has been done to leverage XBRL in a broader analytical context. But this could be change with the announcement by Oracle that it is to provide a free XBRL extension on top of the latest release of Oracle Database.
Around 7,000 new U.S. companies have been mandated to make electronic filings in the XBRL in 2011 but the broader investor community (and even regulators) have benefitted very little from these filings – mainly because of a lack of tools.
"While the XBRL mandate continues to grow, the feedback we keep hearing from the 'other side' of XRBL—regulators, academics, financial analysts, and investors—is that they lack sufficient tools and historic data to leverage the full potential of XBRL," says John O'Rourke, vice president of product marketing, Oracle.
This month, Oracle has released Oracle's XBRL extension which leverages Oracle Database 11g Release 2 XML to manage the collection, validation, storage, and analysis of XBRL data. It enables organizations to create one or more back-end XBRL repositories based on Oracle Database, providing secure XBRL storage and query-ability with a set of XBRL-specific services.
In addition, the extension integrates with Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition to provide analytics, plus interactive development environments (IDEs) and design tools for creating and editing XBRL taxonomies.
O'Rourke says he expect the new extension will prove particularly valuable to regulators, stock exchanges, universities, and other organizations that need to collect, analyze, and disseminate XBRL-based filings especially as the number of businesses required to comply with XBRL is growing.
