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An SEC XBRL financial filing is comprised of report elements. Those report elements can be categorized into groups. For example, the US GAAP XBRL Taxonomy Architecure categories report elements into these groups: Network, Table, Axis, Member, LineItems, Abstract, and Concept. These terms are defined here. The XBRL Abstract Model 2.0 uses different categories: "Cube" is similar to "Table"; "Aspect" is similar to "Axis". These different cagegories of report elements can be related to other categories of report elements. The specific scheme used is less important than understanding the meaning of the scheme. This is the results of an analysis of the relations between report elements for 6674 SEC XBRL financial filings. Most of these relations are logical, rational, and make sense. A minority of the relations make little or no sense or are ambiguous.
SUMMARY OF RESULTS
This is an analysis of parent report elements and what the immediate children of that parent are. For example,
looking at the first set; the parent report element category of "Network" has 0 children which are of the category Network,
1261 children of the category Table, 1 of the category Axis, 3 of the category Member, 183 of the category LineItems,
46 of the category Concept, and 474,310 of the category Abstract. The narrative to the right of the values
explains the reasonableness of the relations.
Parents (Networks): 477041
Has the following children:
Networks : 0 {CORRECT, Networks can never be nested within another network per XBRL
Tables : 1261 {Does not hurt anything and less than .2% of all Networks have a [Table] as a child; EFM says Networks are supposed to have Abstracts as root elements
Axis : 1 {ERROR, a Network would NEVER have an [Axis] as an immediate child
Member : 3 {ERROR, a Network would NEVER have an [Member] as an immediate child
LineItems: 183 {ERROR, a Network would NEVER have an [Line Items] as an immediate child
Concept : 46 {Does not hurt anything and less than .01% of all Networks have a Concept as a child; not really a good practice, but it does not seem ambiguous
Abstract : 474310 {CORRECT, 98% of all Networks have an [Abstract] as a child, SEC requires this but rule NOT FOLLOWED by (1261 + 1 + 3 + 183 + 46 = 1494) filers
NoChildren: 2024 {Why would a network have no children? .4% of Networks have no children
Parents (Table): 232230
Has the following children:
Network : 0 {CORRECT, a [Table] would never have a Network as a child
Tables : 1 {ERROR, a [Table] would never have another [Table] as a child
Axis : 386888 {CORRECT, [Table]s have [Axis] as children
Member : 0 {CORRECT, [Table]s should never have a [Member] as a child
LineItems: 232181 {CORRECT, [Table]s have [Line Items] as a child, exactly 1; seems like there are 49 that don't (232230 - 232181)
Concept : 25 {ERROR, a Concept would NEVER be the child of a [Table]
Abstract : 22 {ERROR, an [Abstract] would NEVER be the child of a [Table]
Parents (Axis): 386912
Has the following children:
Network : 0
Tables : 0
Axis : 0
Member : 450091 {CORRECT, [Member]s can be a child of an [Axis]
LineItems: 0
Concept : 11 {ERROR, a Concept would NEVER be the child of an [Axis]
Abstract : 0
Parents (Member): 1216391
Has the following children:
Network : 0
Tables : 0
Axis : 0
Member : 766221 {CORRECT, [Member]s can have [Member]s as children
LineItems: 0
Concept : 137 {ERROR, a Concept would NEVER be the child of an [Member]
Abstract : 1 {ERROR, an [Abstract] would NEVER be the child of an [Member]
Parent (LineItems): 232690
Has the following children:
Network : 0
Tables : 45 {ERROR, a [Table] would never be the child of another [LineItems]; what would that mean?
Axis : 3 {ERROR, an [Axis] would never be the child of another [LineItems]; what would that mean?
Member : 4 {ERROR, a [Member] would never be the child [LineItems]; what would that mean?
LineItems: 107 {ERROR, a [LineItems] would never be the child of another [LineItems]; what would that mean?
Concept : 1222427 {CORRECT, [LineItems] contain Concepts
Abstract : 113059 {CORRECT, [LineItems] contain [Abstract]s
Parents (Concept): 3165249
Has the following children:
Network : 0
Tables : 24 {This is rare and it probably will not hurt anything, but Concepts generally don't have [Table]s as children
Axis : 0
Member : 0
LineItems: 2 {ERROR, Concepts don't ever have [LineItems] as children; [Table]s do
Concept : 13346 {CORRECT, Concepts can be children of other Concepts
Abstract : 546 {CORRECT, [Abstract]s can be children of Concepts; but this sort of does not make a lot of sense
Parents (Abstract): 732409
Has the following children:
Network : 0
Tables : 230899 {CORRECT, [Abstract]s can have a [Table] as a child; likely the root Concept of a Network
Axis : 20 {ERROR, an [Abstract] should never have an [Axis] as a child
Member : 72 {ERROR, an [Abstract] should never have a [Member] as a child
LineItems: 217 {ERROR, an [Abstract] should never have a [LineItems] as a child; [LineItems] are children of [Table]s
Concept : 1929257 {CORRECT, [Abstract]s can have a Concept as a child
Abstract : 144471 {CORRECT, [Abstract]s can have another [Abstract] as a child
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