Article:		XBRL: The Language of Finance and Accounting
Subject:		XBRL does not use XML Schema
Date:		2004-03-14 02:51:21
From:		John Schlesinger
One of my biggest complaints against XBRL is that it claims to use XML Schema and, indeed, XBRL taxonomies look a lot like schemas, but in fact they are not schemas. What this means in practice is that a validating parser that supports XML Schemas, such as XERCES, is not capable of validating an XBRL document fragment and so it is necessary to invest in other tools for validation. In fact, I am not completely convinced that XBRL document fragments are XML at all. Sure, they use angled brackets and look a lot like XML, but they cannot be validated using either a DTD or an XML Schema. You should be very wary of thinking of XBRL as XML as you may be mislead into thinking that existing XML tools and middleware will be useful.

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• XBRL most certainly does use XML Schema - and then some
  2004-03-15 19:24:01 Hugh Wallis

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