SEC Financial Explorer Supports XBRL Interactive Data

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced the
launch of the "Financial Explorer" on the SEC Web site to help
investors quickly and easily analyze the financial results of public
companies. XBRL is a member of the family of languages based on XML
(Extensible Markup Language), which is a standard for the electronic
exchange of data between businesses and on the internet. Under XML,
identifying tags are applied to items of data so that they can be
processed efficiently by computer software. Financial Explorer paints
the picture of corporate financial performance with diagrams and charts,
using financial information provided to the SEC as "interactive data"
in Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). At the click of a
mouse, Financial Explorer lets investors automatically generate
financial ratios, graphs, and charts depicting important information
from financial statements. Information including earnings, expenses,
cash flows, assets, and liabilities can be analyzed and compared across
competing public companies. The software takes the work out of
manipulating the data by entirely eliminating tasks such as copying and
pasting rows of revenues and expenses into a spreadsheet. That frees
investors to focus on their investments' financial results through
visual representations that make the numbers easier to understand.
Financial Explorer is open source software, meaning that its source
code is free to the public, and technology and financial experts can
update and enhance the software. As interactive data becomes more
commonplace, investors, analysts, and others working in the financial
industry may develop hundreds of Web-based applications that help
investors garner insights about financial results through creative
ways of analyzing and presenting the information. In addition to
Financial Explorer, the SEC currently offers investors two other
online viewers -- the Executive Compensation viewer and the Interactive
Financial Report viewer, also available at online. The Executive
Compensation viewer enables investors to instantly compare what 500
of the largest U.S. companies are paying their top executives. The
Interactive Financial Report viewer also helps investors gather,
analyze, and compare key financial disclosures filed voluntarily by
public companies using XBRL. To date, there have been 307 such filings
from 74 companies. Under the SEC's interactive data filing program,
companies may continue to file XBRL data voluntarily, pending
anticipated Commission rulemaking. More Information See also the Financial Explorer web site: Click Here