Katrin SchmehlThe XBRL Network of the

Committee of European Banking SupervisorMay 5, 2008 - Eindhoven, Netherlands

How to manage changes with

the Versioning Specification

What is XBRL Versioning? XBRL Versioning is a process that compares the content of 2 different

Discoverable Taxonomy Sets (DTSs). The original DTS is referred to as the ‘From DTS’ and the second one as the ‘To DTS’.

The XBRL Versioning process compares the ‘To DTS’ with the ‘From DTS’ and shows, by way of a report, what has changed, and contains the necessary descriptive information that has been added by the taxonomy developer, why the change has been made.

Why is XBRL Versioning important?

XBRL Versioning is important because it minimises the costs associated with migrating from one DTS to another. Updating and revising DTSs are common features of any XBRL implementation and therefore XBRL Versioning is a highly sought after tool as it will provide a well documented trail of the changes associated with a migration to a new DTS.

XBRL Versioning will support the European financial institutions by providing a standardised way to handle changes and differences between taxonomies.

Who can use XBRL Versioning?

Taxonomy developers: To communicate the changes that have been made from the previous version to the next version of an XBRL taxonomy. In case of extension taxonomies, to integrate any changes in the base taxonomy.

Instance creators: To adopt the changes in the mapping process for the creation of the XBRL reports. Preferably this will be done using an automatic process.

Instance receivers: To automatically integrate the changes in a mapping process.

Taxonomy reviewer: To check if all business and technical change requirements have been integrated into the new version of the DTS.

Taxonomy analyst: To compare two different extension taxonomies of the same base taxonomy, e.g. IFRS or COREP/FINREP, in order to analyse the distinctions.

CEBS Versioning Requirements

Documentation of the changes / differences between two taxonomies

two versions of the COREP or FINREP taxonomies two extension taxonomies based on CEBS taxonomies

Addition of documentation concerning changes

Supporting a human readable versioning report

Tracing of changes during and after the development process of a XBRL taxonomy

Providing a standardised syntax to be processed by XBRL software

Supporting mapping processes to adopt changes automatically

Flexibility and extensibility of the versioning report to provide data from a specific point of view add supplementary information and structures

Conclusions In excess of 8,000 users across Europe have to facilitate the

mapping and remapping that will arise by using any new taxonomy version.

CEBS needs to have a workable solution on versioning to increase the acceptance of the COREP and FINREP taxonomies in Europe.

The current XBRL Versioning Specification ◦ is based on XBRL 2.1.◦ covers a great amount of the requirements .◦ provides an extensible as well as reducible versioning report.◦ will be extended by an raw XML schema approach.

A subgroup inside the VWG deals with the development of the XBRL Versioning Specification on Dimensions.

COREP XBRL Network mission: provide versioning files for (1) each COREP/FINREP version/release, (2) each new IFRS version as used in FINREP, (3) national extensions.