Phase I - Conclusion

The IASC Foundation XBRL Team identifies two different alternatives to solve the taxonomy versioning issue. To be flexible as possible and software independent the XBRL Team chooses the post change solution where two final taxonomy versions are automatically differentiated in phase 1 and the result is enhanced in phase 2 to full versioning information.

Phase 1

Phase 1 also prototypes a diffing showcase. The issues and experiences made during the development and implementation are captured in detail in Considerations and Issues.

In summary first there is no best solution to create a diffing and it depends on its purpose. There is a trade off between to less and to much captured diffing information, which have to be balanced. Creating a diffing between two taxonomy versions can become quickly very complex and time consuming from a processing point of view if the information capturing is unbalanced.

Crucial for an automated diffing is that the concept names remain the same in the new taxonomy and only namespaces are different. If that is not guarantied, user will have to correct the diffing result manually.

Even if the diffing captures the basic differences (added, removed and changed concepts), a diffing is only a first step towards a full versioning and does not contain necessary comments, explanations and more precisely information about the changes.

Read more about experiances and next steps of the versioning project in phase II.