Does XBRL facilitate aggregation across dimensions specified in instance document context elements?
No. While XBRL enables the dimensionality to be described, it does not provide information about how the dimensions relate to each other. Thus, unless users of instance documents build an understanding of the data dimensions into their processing applications, operations like aggregation through time or across entity divisions will be risky, to say the least. For example, just equipped with an instance document, how do I know that I have facts for all possible values in a given dimension. More concretely, say I wish to calculate a fact total for the entire business when I only have facts by line of business, as described in the segment elements of XBRL contexts for those facts? How do I know that I am not missing facts for some of the lines of business? That requires information beyond that available in the XBRL markup.
Related Questions
- How do I find the full name of an entity given an entity identifier in the context referenced by a fact in an XBRL instance document?
- Can an XBRL instance document contain multiple context elements that are identical in all respects except for their id attribute?
- Does XBRL facilitate aggregation across dimensions specified in instance document context elements?
