Taxonomy Catalogs

RS API supports pluggable taxonomy catalogs.

Taxonomy catalogs are copies of XBRL files published on the Internet that accelerates DTS Loading process because it avoid the need to read files from the Internet every time an XBRL report is loaded or validated.

Every Taxonomy Catalog is a collection of files and metadata to indicate what content the catalog contains. Some catalogs reside in ZIP compressed format and some others in plain files on the filesystem and some others can be configured to use relational databases.

Taxonomy Catalogs can be installed on multiple places in the XBRL API. In normal circumstances, the root of the Taxonomy Catalog is obtained from the content of the XBRLCATALOGPATH environment variable. See Setting environment variables for more information.

Currently the following taxonomy catalogs are implemented:

Oasis Taxonomy Catalogs

Oasis taxonomy catalogs are recognized by the existence of a Catalog file whose name must be XBRLCatalog.xml in any one of the directories listed in the XBRLCATALOGPATH environment variable. Those files must be according to the OASIS XML Catalog syntax convention. For this reason, it is recommended (but not required) that they reference the Catalog.xsd schema.

The catalog content are plain files and directories in the filesystem. The installation process might have installed some content on a directory called taxonomy-cache but that is not required. You are free to edit this file and supply new content using either the GUI or by using an XML editor.

The resolution of relative files is always relative to the location of the XBRLCatalog.xml file.

Reporting Standard ZIP Catalog format

Reporting Standard ZIP catalogs are recognized by the existence of a Catalog file whose name must be RSZIPCatalog.xml in any one of the directories listed in the XBRLCATALOGPATH environment variable. Those files must be according to a XML Schema created by Reporting Standard. The content of this catalog can be managed by the user using the user interface or can be edited by normal XML editors.

The catalog content are ZIP files created by Reporting Standard. Reporting Standard maintains a global database of taxonomy packages using this format and the user can install or uninstall packages as required.

The resolution of a ZIP file location, when it is specified inside the RSZIPCatalog.xml follows the xml:base conventions. In the absence of specific xml:base attributes, the directory where the RSZIPCatalog.xml file is found is used as base for relative resolution. Note that our GUI tools install all zip files using a directory called taxonomy-packages but this is not required.

XBRL Taxonomy Packages specification created by the XBRL International Consortium

Reporting Standard implements the XBRL Taxonomy Packages specification. The resolution of taxonomy packages does not require a specific configuration file. When the XBRL API starts, the content of directories whose name is "xbrl-packages" and exists in any of the folders indicated in the XBRLCATALOGPATH environment variable is explored and all ZIP files on that directory is loaded as an XBRL Taxonomy Package. If the ZIP file is not a proper ZIP file according with the specifications the file is ignored.