Structured data representation of financial data
The U.S. Security and Exchange Commission recently proposed a timetable requiring 500 of the largest public companies to begin filling their financial data using XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language).
Why XBRL? Instead of publishing financial data in tables and charts, an XBRL representation will allow financial data be described in a more structured representation that is suitable for machine processing. Based on this format, researchers will be able develop software programs to verify data and detect errors.
I think this is a good news for the Semantic Web community. It will create a mass amount of free and real-world data for research. Also, for those who want to play with financial data in a semantic representation, it should be relatively easy to map XBRL into RDF.
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