The Reference Implementation Comparison, SEC XBRL Filing example takes the Reference Implementation (Ideal), SEC XBRL Filing, duplicates the XBRL instance and company extension XBRL taxonomies, and creates a very comparable set of three XBRL instances and XBRL taxonomies. Each company's XBRL taxonomy is distinct as is the XBRL instance. The point of this comparison is to show that comparison is possible, what makes XBRL instances comparable, and what takes away from comparability. No judgment is being made about what should or should not be comparable; this is an exercise in showing how to use the XBRL technology to achieve comparabilty. It is up to the domains applying the XBRL technology to determine the comparability they desire.
| Number | Item | ABC Company | XYZ Company | QQQ Company |
| 1. | HTML Filing (Human Readable) | ABC Company HTML | XYZ Company HTML | QQQ Company HTML |
| 2. | XBRL Instance | XBRL | XBRL | XBRL |
| 3. | RSS Feed (points to each XBRL instance so software applications can point to one file and read and load all three XBRL instances) | |||
| 4. | Company Extenstion Taxonomy (XBRL) | ABC Company Extension (XSD) | XYZ Company Extension (XSD) | QQQ Company Extension (XSD) |
| 5. | Company Extenstion Taxonomy (Human Readable) | ABC Company Extension (HTML) | XYZ Company Extension (HTML) | QQQ Company Extension (HTML) |
| 6. | HTML Page With All Files for Each Example | HTML | HTML | HTML |
| 7. | Prototype extraction tool, Excel spreadsheet in ZIP file (contains macros) | |||