A Detailed View of Extensible Business Reporting Language Instance

Introduction: XBRL instance is the XML document that contains the real data in an XML format. This document expects a fundamental knowledge about XBRL, which you can read from my posts here. At this point, I will discuss about an instance document in detail.

A Detailed View of Extensible Business Reporting Language Taxonomy

This is the second article in the extensible business reporting language series. If you have not read the first one, you can read it here. This article assumes that the reader has already read this previous article. In this article, I will attempt to cover the most important aspects in detail.

Implementing Aspect Oriented Programming Framework - Java Instrumentation

What is Aspect Oriented Programing: Aspect Orented Programing or AOP is a design pattern or programming practice, in which the code for cross cutting concern is separated out from the main program logic, thus effectively reducing the program complexity. Now what is a cross cutting concern? They are application non-functional requirements that apply to multiple functionalities. A simple example would be logging. Logging is done whenever some predefined things happen (for example a method is invoked). Normally, every method that is invoked would have to contain the code for logging. In AOP, we write the logging code in a separate method may be in a separate class and then configure our AOP framework to do logging whenever a method is invoked. There are so many good tutorials available on AOP, one of which is here. However, in Java SE environment, it certainly requires a change in the method's byte code made by the AOP framework. I will demonstrate how an AOP framework performs load time weaving (changes byte code during runtime).

Enterprise Java Beans - A Broad Overview

What are Enterprise Java Beans: Enterprise java beans are Java EE server side business layer components. They can be used to develop highly available distributed transactional systems. Like servlets and JSPs are used to develop view components in java EE, EJBs are used to develop business logic. Today, I am not going to discuss how an EJB can be deployed on the server. There are just too many tutorials available on the internet. I will discuss the need to use EJB, where it fits and what it gives. In the recent times, people have preferred Spring framework instead of EJB, the advantage of what is being lightweight. It however needs to be discussed that being lightweight is not the only qualities a business framework needs to have. There is a limit to how much spring can scale. There are also somethings spring simply cannot handle, not at least without external component injected through its AOP framework. Enterprise Java Beans are complex and heavier weight, because they attempt to provide solution to much more complex regime of problems. Also note that, unlike spring, EJB is not a product, its a specification. Which means you would have a choice among many implementations, both proprietary and open source, of EJB; where as there is only one spring.

However, after EJB 3.x, deploying and programming EJBs are easier than doing so with spring... believe me.

Fundamentals of Extensible Business Reporting Language

What is Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL): XBRL is an XML based reporting standard mainly designed for financial reporting. However, just like any XML based format, the XBRL standard is open enough to fit into other purposes as well. Most developed countries use XBRL for all financial reporting purposes. There are many documentation about XBRL which are suited to the accounting professionals and business men. However, there is a scarcity of technical documentation. So, I will explain the essential concept of XBRL in this text. Please note that XBRL specification is a very complex specification and it would require more than one article to explain properly. Please stay tuned for more articles.

The following URL will give an idea about how an XBRL document might look in a human readable view http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/viewer?action=view&cik=1419793&accession_number=0001144204-11-051027&xbrl_type=v#