1. Using Semantic Web Technologies
to Facilitate XBRL-based
Financial Data Comparability
1st Finance and Economics on the Semantic Web Workshop, FEOSW’12
27 May 2012, Crete, Greece
Héctor Carretié1, Beatriz Torvisco1, Roberto García2
1
Finances and Accounting Department
Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain
2
HCI and Data Integration Research Group
Universitat de Lleida, Spain

2. Introduction
• Explore Semantic Web technologies for
financial information
• Most public financial data available as
XBRL
• Reuse this data, map XBRL to RDF
– Apply generic mapping: ReDeFer
• XSD2OWL, XML2RDF
• Once as RDF+OWL, improve
comparability using semantic links

3. Approach
• Reuse XBRL data and schemas
• Facilitate round-trip:
– XBRL  SW XBRL
• Showcase Semantic Web benefits
• Test data:
– SEC’s XBRL
– Spanish CNMV XBRL

4. ReDeFer
• Part of the Rhizomik initiative
• ReDeFer (in and out Semantic Web)
– RDF2HTML+RDFa
– RDF2SVG
– XML2RDF
– XSD2OWL
Use cases: MPEG-7, MPEG-21,…

5. XBRL XML to RDF
• ReDeFer XML2RDF,
model XML tree using triples
– xsd:element and xsd:atribute  rdf:Property
– xbrli:id and xbrli:identifier  rdf:Resource ID
– Other resources, anonymous
Rendered by RDF2SVG

6. XBRL XSD to OWL
• XBRL Schemas: XBRL 2.1, US GAAP1, PGC…
• ReDeFer XSD2OWL
XSD2OWL mappings
XML Schema OWL
rdf:Property
element | attribute owl:DatatypeProperty
owl:ObjectProperty
element@substitutionGroup rdfs:subPropertyOf
element@type rdfs:range
complexType owl:Class
complexType//element owl:Restriction
extension@base |
rdfs:subClassOf
restriction@base
@maxOccurs, owl:maxCardinality,
@minOccurs owl:minCardinality
sequence, owl:intersectionOf,
choice owl:unionOf
Core classes and properties for XBRL Instance
1
Ontologies available from http://rhizomik.net/ontologies/bizontos

7. XML2RDF plus XSD2OWL
• Enrich RDF with links to classes for
corresponding XSD complexTypes:

8. Semantic XBRL
• Dataset size (from US SEC)
– May 2012: 125,55 million triples from 29342 XBRL filings
– Available from http://rhizomik.net/semanticxbrl/

9. Comparability
• Generate semantic links among accounting
principles (XBRL taxonomies)
– Automatic ontology alignment tools
– Experts input
– Numeric analysis
• Experiment:
– Telefonica S.A. Balace Sheet 2008 and 2009
• XBRL for Spanish CNMV
• XBRL for US SEC

12. DESCRIBE ?r
WHERE {
?r a
ifrs:NoncurrentAssets }
DESCRIBE ?r
WHERE {
?r a
ifrs:OtherNoncurrentFinancialAssets
}

13. Conclusions
• XBRL tools: for financial information
edition and maintenance (formulae,…)
XML2RDF XSD2OWL
• Semantic Web tools: data integration,
cross querying,… COMPARABILITY
– Across filings, companies, accounting
principles,…

14. Future Work
• Generate mappings across:
– Different filings for the same company
– Different companies
– Different accounting principles (taxonomies)
• Compute common ratios
• Develop demo webpps:
– E.g.: show accounting data for
ownership/subsidiary networks of companies,
ratios…

15. Thank you for your attention
Héctor Carretié1, Beatriz Torvisco1, Roberto García2
Contact:
roberto.garcia@udl.cat
http://rhizomik.net/~roberto/
1
Finances and Accounting Department
Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain
2
HCI and Data Integration Research Group
Universitat de Lleida, Spain