How to deactivate assertions

..-ignore-val.xml   mechanism to deactivate assertions

Date: Brussels, March 2017

Background and rationale

Eurofiling Architecture taxonomies are used for data collection with the financial industry by European Authorities (EBA, ECB, EIOPA) and by corresponding National Competent Authorities.

These taxonomies share the same architecture type and can be exploited with open source tools, such as DPM Architect (© Banco de España).

Common elements are referenced in the www.eurofiling.info domain, such as the model and interval arithmetic schemes.

Taxonomies contain in most cases assertion sets with severity assertions, individually triggered depending on the existence of filing indicators in the given instance document.

However, in practise, assertions are frequently “deactivated” via work-arounds.

An embedded taxonomy mechanism to (conditionally) blacklist individual assertions is not available; this paper proposes a mechanism to include the feature in a taxonomy.

This mechanism would enable the simultaneous publication of:

  • List of deactivated (and/or reactivated assertions) in Excel or PDF, as is
  • The same information in an XML file, immediately consumable by XBRL tools

Proposed mechanism.

Precondition: update to the latest version of www.eurofiling.info/eu/fr/xbrl/val/params.xml

The example below is based on a Taxonomy “eac_ind.xsd” attached as zip.

STEP1: include empty blacklist in the Taxonomy

A dummy linkbase (eac-ind-ignore-val.xml) is made (the “Blacklist”):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <!-- dummy linkbase -->
<link:linkbase xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" 
xmlns:link="http://www.xbrl.org/2003/linkbase" 
xmlns:gen="http://xbrl.org/2008/generic" 
xmlns:label="http://xbrl.org/2008/label" 
xmlns:variable="http://xbrl.org/2008/variable" 
xmlns:xbrli="http://www.xbrl.org/2003/instance" 
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.xbrl.org/2003/linkbase 
http://www.xbrl.org/2003/xbrl-linkbase-2003-12-31.xsd 
http://xbrl.org/2008/generic http://www.xbrl.org/2008/generic-link.xsd 
http://xbrl.org/2008/label http://www.xbrl.org/2008/generic-label.xsd 
http://xbrl.org/2008/variable http://www.xbrl.org/2008/variable.xsd">
<gen:link xlink:type="extended" 

xlink:role="http://www.xbrl.org/2003/role/link">
</gen:link>
</link:linkbase>

The linkbase is linked to the entrypoint:

<link:linkbaseRef 
xlink:href="eac-ind-ignore-val.xml" 
xlink:type="simple" 
xlink:arcrole="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink/properties/linkbase"/>

The taxonomy is published with the dummy Blacklist, which is a single XML file per taxonomy entry point.

STEP 2: deactivate one or more assertions

The Blacklist can be changed by the European Authority to generally deactivate a single assertion by including an extended link in the linkbase:

<gen:link xlink:type="extended" xlink:role="http://www.xbrl.org/2003/role/link">
<variable:precondition xlink:type="resource" xlink:label="ignore_1" test="false()" />
<link:loc xlink:type="locator" xlink:href="../val/vr-srf_v0003.xml#srb_srf_v0003" 
xlink:label="loc_srb_srf_v0003" />
<gen:arc xlink:type="arc" xlink:arcrole="http://xbrl.org/arcrole/2008/variable-set-precondition" xlink:from="loc_srb_srf_v0003" xlink:to="ignore_1" />
</gen:link>

STEP 3: deactivate one or more assertions for a single reporting entity

The Blacklist can be changed by any actor to specifically deactivate a single assertion for one reporting entity by including an extended link in the linkbase:

<gen:link xlink:type="extended" xlink:role="http://www.xbrl.org/2003/role/link">
<variable:precondition xlink:type="resource" 
xlink:label="ignore_2_ALPHANUMERICLENGTH20" test="$RepEntity != 'ALPHANUMERICLENGTH20'" />
<link:loc xlink:type="locator" 
xlink:href="../val/vr-srf_v0015.xml#srb_srf_v0015" 
xlink:label="loc_srb_srf_v0015" />
<gen:arc xlink:type="arc" 
xlink:arcrole="http://xbrl.org/arcrole/2008/variable-set-precondition" 
xlink:from="loc_srb_srf_v0015" xlink:to="ignore_2_ALPHANUMERICLENGTH20" />
</gen:link>

 

Live examples

EIOPA blacklists for the 2.3.0 taxonomy : http://eurofiling.info/portal/dev-eiopa-deactivations-230/