Re: advice on modeling an XBRL fact as a triple

Hi Dave,

> One question is the namespace for describing XBRL instances. Is it 
> better to the preexisting xbrli <http://www.xbrl.org/2003/instance> 
> namespace instead of a generic XBRL namespace?

Even though that namespace wasn't designed specifically for use in the 
predicates of RDF triples, it's the namespace defined by the standard, 
so I'm going to go with that for now instead of defining yet another 
namespace. If a specific XBRL ontology gets any traction, I'll use it 
instead of defining another one and relying on the presence of OWL 
awareness to map equivalences.

> It might be worth adding datatypes to the literals, e.g.
> 
>         "-6"^^xsd:integer

Yeah, I was thinking about adding one for the rdf:value value, and then 
realized that there are several other numbers and dates in there that 
may also benefit from explicit typing.

> XBRL Linkbases use XLink to refer to element definitions in XBRL 
> Schemas. The URI for the schema depends on the server it has been copied 
> to, e.g. the EDGAR archive. It may be better to use the target namespace 
> for the schema and element name, in place of the schema URI and element 
> definition id.

This is just the kind of thing that has me concentrating on the instance 
documents for now and forgetting about the XBRL taxonomy documents for 
now. I'll defer to your judgment!

Bob

Received on Tuesday, 16 September 2008 01:41:27 UTC