SDV's are clearly not the issue
2002-06-01 06:02:13 W. E. Perry
[Reply]
mwillis: Walter's points here on the SDV are interesting and his technical semantic perspective is clear.
That semantic perpective is one of the two premises on which the argument here is based. The other is the dependence of expertise in the reporting or rendition of data upon equivalent expertise in its collection and selection, which leads to the corollary that the expert process of rendition must determine how data is to be instantiated for its particular use.
mwillis: What is not clear is the relationship of this perspective to the technical standard based concepts outlined for corporate reporting by the FASB, SEC or the IASC.
Those standard based concepts are more related to the other premise--the nature of expertise. Domain expertise in the reporting, manipulation or other rendition of data in order to implement the standards of these authorities requires equally expert knowledge of the data inputs on which that rendition relies. The SDV severs, by design, the direct, specific and intimate connections of between the data produced by one expert process and that consumed by another. 'Breaking down the silo' in this way--by interposing the SDV between one expert process and another--frustrates the expertise of both. The data produced by an expert process cannot be made available in a form native to that expertise and specifically designed to particular perspective of that process, without regard to what other processes might consume some portion of the same data further downstream. Instead, the expert process must confine its output to the pre-agreed dialect of the SDV, just as every process which would consume that data might obtain it in no form more particular to the circumstances of its production than the SDV allows.
mwillis: It is also not clear why a company's failure to comply with certain of these existing reporting standards is a reasonable basis to consider the SDV as a central issue.
My point is rather that the SDV, as the only possibility for input to reporting processes, allows gaming the outcome of those processes by the choice of specific items of the SDV as input to that reporting. Whether the instance values of the SDV chosen to effect a particular outcome in fact reflect an otherwise-defensible 'truth' about a company's circumstances is a separate question. Yes, the instance facts submitted as input to a given reporting might be lies, but then again they might not, or they might be arguably defensible half truths. The issue that concerns me here is which items of the SDV--largely regardless of their instance values--are submitted as the basis for a given reporting because of the discovery that that particular combination of inputs is the magic incantation to trigger an intended output.
mwillis: Finally, Walter does not address the opacity of the current reporting formats in which the existing reporting standards are represented in electronic stone tablets presented by public companies to the investors in the capital markets.
I think that this is a question of how--which is to say, with what expertise and to accomplish which goals, of transparency or accessibility, for example--a particular data rendition process is implemented. Indeed there are inadequate, opaque and downright misleading reportings out there. But that is, I think, separate from the question of what can be done with expertise in reporting given only the inputs of an SDV versus given detailed access to the data produced by another expert process.
mwillis: Why he has chosen XBRL as an example for SDV is of particular question due to the extensibility of the taxonomies and the clear intent that companies would leverage this for clarity in the supply chain providing information to investors in the capital markets.
I have chosen XBRL because it is the example, par excellence, of a generalized, horizontal SDV interposed between expert processes producing data and other expert processes intended to consume it. The extensibility mechanisms do not apply to this particular case, where the (only!) relationship of expert process to expert process--on a many-to-many basis, and where most processes may not know of the existence of the others, let alone their specifics--is through a pre-ordained fixed vocabulary.
mwillis: How the XBRL model enhances the current normalization processes of infomediaries (clearly an existing SDV consideration) is absent from his comments.
To the extent that such normalization results in dumbing down the output of expert processes to the common denominator of the SDV, and thereby depriving other expert processes of the quality of data which they require, it is the very target of my essay.
--Walter Perry
- SDV's are clearly not the issue
2002-06-13 20:11:18 Alan Hoyland
[Reply]
Can you two speak English or take your discussion off line.
Paragraphs like:
That semantic perpective is one of the two premises on which the argument here is based. The other is the dependence of expertise in the reporting or rendition of data upon equivalent expertise in its collection and selection, which leads to the corollary that the expert process of rendition must determine how data is to be instantiated for its particular use.
should be replaced with:
That was one of my points. The other is that to correctly fill out a form you must be an expert not just in the subject of the form but in the form itself.
Your use of the English languge is an attempt to prove that you are an expert not by your command of the subject but a command of it's vocabulary. Something that backfires on most intelligent people.
- SDV's are clearly not the issue
2002-06-24 14:18:43 W. E. Perry
[Reply]
No. Your simplification conflates (into a hopeless muddle, I'm afraid) the two points which my more exact language is intended to distinguish. Filling out a form, as an example of submitting data from one expert domain to another, introduces through the experience of most readers of that example, the two assumptions which I feel are unwarranted and which I feel underlie the dangers of SDVs. One is that the submitter and the receiver of the data share semantic understanding broad enough to subsume all of the salient points of expertise on both sides. That is, there is nothing in the preparer's expert understanding of the data, nor in the recipient's, not covered by their prior understanding of each other's domains. This 'white box' view of interoperability contradicts the very nature of the specialization which defines expertise, and in the real world is only to be found within an homogenous and monolithic organization. Forms are intended to provide the (for efficiency's sake, smallest possible) common denominator for transmitting data between expert domains where, by the very nature of expert specialization, it will be differently used with different semantics in each location. Precisely what we cannot assume is that whoever submits the form 'must be an expert not just in the subject of the form but in the form itself' when what is meant by 'the subject of the form' is the subject as understood by the recipient, who will process that form according to his own expertise within his own specialized domain.
The other thing we should not assume is the form itself: it is the very SDV which I am arguing against. In other words, data submitted by an expert who collected and formatted it to the full expression of his expertise will not be data in the specific form which an expert in a different domain would expect to process it for his own particular purposes.The form which you use in your example is precisely the compromised common denominator of an SDV which does not adequately serve the expertise of the domain from which the data comes nor that to which it goes.
Your simplification and example therefore utterly misstate my point, and illustrate it with the very thing I claim that a proper understanding of my point cannot countenance. Granted my language may be heavy going and demanding, but it makes the point as simply as possible, if no simpler.
--Walter Perry
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