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/