Semantic Integration Approach to Efficient Business Data Supply Chain: Integration Approach to Interoperable XBRL
Author(s)
Zhu, Hongwei
Madnick, Stuart E.
Date Issued
January 11, 2008
Series/Report no.
MIT Sloan School of Management Working Paper
4671-07
Abstract
As an open standard for electronic communication of business and financial data, XBRL has the
potential of improving the efficiency of the business data supply chain. A number of jurisdictions
have developed different XBRL taxonomies as their data standards. Semantic heterogeneity
exists in these taxonomies, the corresponding instances, and the internal systems that store the
original data. Consequently, there are still substantial difficulties in creating and using XBRL
instances that involve multiple taxonomies. To fully realize the potential benefits of XBRL, we
have to develop technologies to reconcile semantic heterogeneity and enable interoperability of
various parts of the supply chain. In this paper, we analyze the XBRL standard and use examples
of different taxonomies to illustrate the interoperability challenge. We also propose a technical
solution that incorporates schema matching and context mediation techniques to improve the
efficiency of the production and consumption of XBRL data.
Subjects
XBRL
semantic data integration,
context mediation, ontology,
schema matching
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