Taxonomy Catalogs Overview
Taxonomy Catalogs Overview
As the name suggest, a taxonomy catalog is a local repository of taxonomy files that the processor can consume as if they were coming from the Internet.
For example:
An XBRL Report contains a schemaRef pointing to an external URL where a taxonomy shall be located.
In normal circumstances, the target URL is available and reading the Taxonomy is required to perform XBRL validation. Reading files from the Internet is also a slow process.
The solution is to install a kind of "proxy" that serves the files as if they were read from the official location but the file is on the hard drive.
The first idea about implementing taxonomy catalogs comes from OASIS https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/spec-2001-08-06.html
At this time, we have implemented several taxonomy catalogs so if one file is served by a taxonomy catalog the processor never goes to the Internet. On the tools that contains a user interface, at the very bottom of the taxonomy catalogs there is one that asks the user to provide a file from a directory. This makes a point about how deep we use the idea of taxonomy catalogs.
This wiki contains information about the 3 most commonly used:
The Oasis Taxonomy Catalogs was the first one implemented on the RS API. This one is good to map local files extracted in a directory that exactly matches the structure of the files on an official web site.
The Reporting Standard Taxonomy Catalog was defined back in year 2010. It is still in use and a good mechanism to distribute taxonomy packages. It is based on a ZIP file with an additional file with metadata that describes the ZIP content, the official URL start string and the mapping between the ZIP content (directories inside the ZIP) and the official locations. The API reads a file where are ZIP files that belongs to the catalog are explored.
The XBRL International Taxonomy Packages is similar to the previous one and it will be released as XBRL Specification during year 2016. The differences against the Reporting Standard Taxonomy Catalog are that the XBRL Int version supports the declaration of taxonomy entry points in the metadata and the ZIP file does not need to be "registered" in a separate file. The ZIP file can just be drop to a folder and it becomes available to be used.
There are calls to the DTSContainer in order to set the taxonomy catalogs available and to register additional taxonomy catalogs during the API startup. The API contains more taxonomy catalogs defined but they are considered "advanced use" and might not be documented here. If you need further information or assistant drop us an email.
References
XBRL Catalog
Adding taxonomies to the ZIP Catlog
Select Taxonomy From Catalog
