The interactive maps, video walls, and touch screen applications that make for exciting election night coverage are made possible because of eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML). The dramatic data manipulation seen on television gives financial professionals a good look at the capabilities XBRL places at their own fingertips.
Many investors and analysts don’t realize the same capability to automatically aggregate and analyze data is available to financial professionals using XBRL data and software. The only things we lack are those 95-inch screens, swirling graphics, and intense background music.
XBRL is simply a business-specific version of XML: eXtensible Business Reporting Language. The XBRL data now available to financial professionals has never been more comprehensive, granular, or more instantaneously re-useable. Just like election night commentators comparing voting and poll results, financial analysts using XBRL applications can organize and manipulate data to track performance and compare hundreds of companies simultaneously. 
EDGAR Online has a huge online database of historic and current XBRL-tagged data on U.S. public companies, and the SEC is about to require companies to start reporting their results in the XBRL format. It’s a global trend: international exchanges, banks, and even governmental agencies are all moving toward XBRL as the universal language for business reporting. Learn more about the SEC mandate for companies to report in XBRL.
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