Gepsio: XBRL Document Object Model for .NET

New Post: Multiple Facts, same Name

jbcholdings — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 20:51:48 GMT

Hey Jeff, have you had a chance to look at this yet?

New Post: Multiple Facts, same Name

JeffreyFerguson — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 16:33:18 GMT

Oh, OK. Thanks for the clarification. I will take a look at it this weekend. I am going to presume that all of the necessary ties are in the XBRL document. If that is true, then Gepsio has access to them. If that is true, the Gepsio needs to do a better job of pulling them out for your inspection.

I'll post more info when I have it, and may be writing a blog post to address the issue and Gepsio's solution to the problem.

Thanks for helping me make Gepsio better and more useful!

New Post: Multiple Facts, same Name

jbcholdings — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 16:25:28 GMT

Jeff-

Your correct. Thanks for looking over it. I spent some more time last night trying to build up data-structures for items like, for example, "Consolidated Statement of Shareholders Equity", which is the item I initially had in question (just because it was the first fact pulled out).

So I tried taking the fact name, for example: "us_gaap-StockHoldersEquity" but since that tag is re-used it's hard to find the association between that particular tag and it's let's call it "parent" table like CSOSE

New Post: Multiple Facts, same Name

JeffreyFerguson — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 16:14:30 GMT

Thanks for the link! I'll be looking at this filing over the weekend.

Can you tell me more about what you're trying to do, exactly? From what I can surmise, you have StockHolderEquity facts, and you're trying to figure out how to find the values for the columns in that row, such as Total, Common Stock (Value,Shares), and Retrained Earnings. Is that correct? If it isn't, please correct me.

If this is hard to do in raw XBRL, and Gepsio has enough information to figure it out, then it seems to be that Gepsio should be providing additional methods and properties to make finding this information easier. After all, that's my vision for Gepsio: make XBRL easier.

New Post: Multiple Facts, same Name

jbcholdings — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 16:29:02 GMT

Hey guys!

@JeffreyFerguson - yes, most recent before today (as they are filing again later today Jan. 23, 2013)

Thanks for getting back to me. SO I think at least part of my issue (as I discovered after posting last night) was that I don't think I was getting the associated Cal. link-base document. I know that the latest Gepsio includes a URL based link-base associated document download, but I don't know if this was happening when I referenced the document remotely as I did in my example.

When I downloaded all the files and placed the base document in a local directory with the associated linkbase documents in the same folder I started to get more information (cal. orders, weights, to-from, etc.)

I know it's going to be kind of a chore, but I think what I need to do next is write a method to try to follow this order of ops (trying to get closer to creating a view more like the XBRL Previewer on the SEC's website)

Fragment Facts -> Look for Schema association (as WaltN mentions) -> Look for calculation link and order (within the schema?) -> Organize -> Store

I don't know if i can attach a file directly on codeplex -- here is a link to the document's view on the SEC website: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000119312512444068/

New Post: Entity Framework Code First

JeffreyFerguson — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 14:39:52 GMT

Thank you! I will take a look at it. I am aware of the Abstract Model, at a conceptual level, but I haven't yet had the time to go through the specification. In a way, Gepsio is already providing an abstract model of XBRL, in that it provides classes, methods and properties that allow you to work with XBRL data without having to understand XBRL syntax. With that said, I am sure that there is more that Gepsio could do to bring itself into alignment with this Abstract Model specification.

New Post: Multiple Facts, same Name

JeffreyFerguson — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 14:38:01 GMT

Thanks for the feedback! I am here, and I apologize for my delay in responding to you.

Are you using the most recent AAPL 10-K? I want to address the issue by looking at the same filing you are. If you'd care to attach the XBRL instance document and associated schemas and linkbase documents, I will be able to follow along with your work.

I think Walt makes a good point regarding the inconsistency of XBRL instance authors. I will take a look at how much Gepsio can do to combat this inconsistency.

New Post: Multiple Facts, same Name

WaltN — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 14:12:38 GMT

If you look down a few topics chronologically you'll see that my ("NEWB") problems are very similar. For starters, you'll find that each fact has an associated temporal context ("instant" in time or period in time). If you're lucky that will allow you to sort out your multiple-value problem. If not, you've a problem similar to mine. Jeff indicated a couple of months ago, but he hasn't been heard from since.

The "father" of XBRL recommended to me on the XBRL general forum that I chase the calculation chain to deduce which fact I wanted. I replied that I didn't think that was worth the bother. Personally, I concluded, right or wrong, that companies were plunging down the road tagging their data, and, when they run into weaknesses in the XBRL or other related standards, they adopt their own ad hoc conventions (e.g., distinguishing context names). I was dealing with IBM data, and there was a different context name for each (fact, context). That worked fine enough for IBM, but others tag differently.

New Post: Multiple Facts, same Name

jbcholdings — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 07:29:45 GMT

Still haven't been able to figure out how to interpret the relationships between these different values. I understand that there is a 'calculation link' between different facts, but I don't know how to discover this within Gepsio?

The CalculationArc class seems to be where I would look for this information, but when targeting a base XBRL document as in my example, I don't know how to load the Calculation link base to discover the relationships between facts.

New Post: Entity Framework Code First

bobk544 — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 18:58:06 GMT

Hello, i am looking forward to the day that i can create an EF framework for the XBRL data model and definitely looking foward to using you're excellent APIs here on this project.

Here is the XBRL data model link:

http://www.xbrl.org/Specification/abstractmodel-primary/PWD-2012-06-06/abstractmodel-primary-PWD-2012-06-06.html

New Post: Multiple Facts, same Name

jbcholdings — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 03:25:51 GMT

Gepsio is working out a lot better for me in understanding and digesting XBRL! Which is awesome!

I just have a question getting started, I've taken a recent AAPL 10-K and downloaded it and started to look through it.

I understand from looking through the documentation that XbrlFragment contains multiple Facts which could be either an Item or a Tuple.

In my first go-round, I just output all the facts cast as Items

Doc.Load("http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000119312512444068/aapl-20120929.xml");
      foreach (XbrlFragment fragment in Doc.XbrlFragments)
      {
      	Console.WriteLine("Facts in fragments: "+fragment.Facts);                   
	foreach(Item fact in fragment.Facts){
        	Console.WriteLine("Name: " + fact.Name + " | Value: " + fact.Value.ToString());
        }   
      }

However, this caused me to have multiple Facts elements with the same name, for example, StockHolderEquity comes up at elements 1,7,8 - etc., representing different parts of the same areas of the fact sheet (I'm new to XBRL) - but I able to gather these different values are actually different columns on the same line: like: Total, Common Stock (Value,Shares), Retrained Earnings, etc.

Is this the concept of a tuple? If it is, or if it's not I am trying to understand a good way to figure out the specifics of what I'm looking at? Do I need to associate each Fact with it's Context to figure out what it is? And if it's a calculation of other fields, or a component of another Fact?

New Post: More Newb Questions: About XBRL Financial Reporting

WaltN — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 16:31:58 GMT

I think I've run out of things to try. I spent the morning running the code I've got peeking at this and that, looking for opportunities to uncover the hierarchy represented in the filing. I keep reading that that is in the schemas. However, every reference I've seen in a specific fact references back to the whole blessed schema and not its components. So that effort was fruitless.

I resorted to manually searching for all of the multiple-matching facts of interest by value in the human-readable htm file. What I found, in most cases, the unwanted contexts are associated with "notes" in the htm file. Just to make things interesting, there was an exception: For StockholdersEquityIncludingPortionAttributableToNoncontrollingInterest, all of the unwanted contexts were members of a running calculation on a principal section of the filing. In this single case, tracing the calculation chain might help. But I still have no clue about how to do that.

New Post: More Newb Questions: About XBRL Financial Reporting

WaltN — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 14:04:18 GMT

P.S., I forgot to ask: Charlie and Louis suggested chasing the calculation tree to distinguish one item from another. I’m capable of tracing trees, but I’m in the dark about what Gepsio class or classes will get me started. Do you have a suggestion?

New Post: More Newb Questions: About XBRL Financial Reporting

WaltN — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 13:14:58 GMT

Just to be sure, here ‘tis.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/51143/000110465912072210/0001104659-12-072210-index.htm

Yep. That looks the same as your URL.

Walt

From: JeffreyFerguson [email removed]
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2012 7:57 AM
To: waltniehoff@stny.rr.com
Subject: Re: More Newb Questions: About XBRL Financial Reporting [gepsio:402125]

From: JeffreyFerguson

Walt,

Are you still working with the http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/51143/000110465912072210/0001104659-12-072210-index.htm instance document you mentioned before? I want to make sure that I am using the same document you're using so I can answer your question properly.

New Post: More Newb Questions: About XBRL Financial Reporting

JeffreyFerguson — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 12:56:50 GMT

Walt,

New Post: More Newb Questions: About XBRL Financial Reporting

WaltN — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 12:53:42 GMT

Jeff,

That's essentially what I'm doing. I've verified that I am dealing with an Item and not a Tuple. After the cast, I examine the ContextRef and ignore any duration or instant that doesn't match what I'm looking for, and I continue the search. In the dataset I'm using, after this screening, four Revenues facts remain that match the duration (for Revenues) of interest. So, I anxiously await your introduction of "concept."

According to Hoffman (in Dummies, p 19), "concept" (in the context of XBRL) means a business term like "Net Income (Loss)." My problem is that this is a definition from a 50,000 foot altitude. (I need a 3,000 foot view.) Is a concept the same as a fact?

The standard (5.1.1.1) suggests a link back to the taxonomy schema that defines the concept. But I don't see any such link in either Gepsio or the raw XML. But, maybe I'm just lost.

I've got a hunch that the four different Revenues facts, each with its own unique context ID, deals with four different parts of the filing. I know the one I want is the one associated with the "Consolidated Statement of Income." But I have no idea how to determine that linkage.

New Post: More Newb Questions: About XBRL Financial Reporting

JeffreyFerguson — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:48:57 GMT

The code will look something like this:

foreach(var currentFact in currentFragment)
{
    if(currentFact is Item)
    {
        // This fact is a single-value item.
        var currentItem = currentFact as Item;
        var contextForCurrentItem = currentItem.ContextRef;
        // examine properties of contextForCurrentItem
    }
    else if(currentFact is Tuple)
    {
        // This fact is a multi-value tuple.
        var currentTuple = currentFact as Tuple;
    }
}

I wrote that from memory -- I could be wrong -- but it will be something like that.

New Post: More Newb Questions: About XBRL Financial Reporting

JeffreyFerguson — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:45:47 GMT

I am putting together a blog post describing how to read context information from facts through Gepsio. I will also show a code sample in C# (and perhaps Powershell). I will post a URL to the article to this thread when the article is ready.

New Post: More Newb Questions: About XBRL Financial Reporting

WaltN — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 12:21:23 GMT

I'll be glad to continue the discussion and experiment.

What is the name of Gepsio's concept object? I specifically looked for it in the Help file, even searched for it.

New Post: More Newb Questions: About XBRL Financial Reporting

JeffreyFerguson — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 05:14:57 GMT

If it's all the same to you, I'd love to continue the discussion here. I am coming to XBRL from the point of view of a software developer. I need to know more about the actual business cases and problems that arise in its use. Knowing those issues helps makes things like Gepsio better.

In an earlier comment, you asked:

He speaks of "concepts," I understand what that is conceptually, having read about it in some of his writings. But I am unable to relate it to any thing I have seen in an XBRL filing or in Gepsio's document object model.

Gepsio does indeed have the notion of a Concept object. I will see what I can do about writing up a small sample that illustrates its use. In short, an Item object contains a property called ContextRef, which references a Concept object that describes the concept for the item.