Paris, France, May 02, 2013 –(PR.com)– In the form of a flexible, generic and taxonomy-driven solution that leverages the XBRL extension of the Oracle 11g XML database, XBRL Analyzer is the first application of its kind to release XBRL data from the technical arena and allow business end-users to regain control over their analysis needs. With XBRL Analyzer, the underlying technical sophistication of the XBRL standard is masked, and non-technical users can freely exploit and extract business-relevant information from mass volumes of highly-dimensional XBRL data that, without analysis, would be effectively devoid of value. Read more

Dr. Graham G. Rong, founder of IKA LLC, and senior industrial liaison officer at the MIT Corporate Relations Office, leading collaboration between the institute and industry, has been working on a semantic web approach to social and financial analysis based on digital financial data and other information related to companies that can be found on the Internet. The approach first turns XBRL data from SEC reports into RDF format, and then links that with the relevant social information in the company’s ecosystem, to deliver more business value.

The project, which began at MIT (see our earlier story here), has advanced to the application stage, and the software is moving from a JAVA to a browser-based interface. Rong says the team also is developing a web services API for the system.

“Current XBRL technology primary collects financial data for reporting, and secondarily, as more XBRL-based financial data becomes available, it will need to effectively extract financial data for value,” says Rong. Semantic web technology lets the focus be on the latter.

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The Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) is kicking off a project with Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. in Japan to build a large-scale RDF store in the cloud capable of processing hundreds of billions of triples. The idea, says DERI research fellow Dr. Michael Hausenblas, “is to build up a platform that allows you to process and convert any kind of data” — from relational databases to LDAP record-based, directory-like data, but also streaming sources of data, such as sensors and even the Twitter firehose.

The project has defined eight different potential enterprise use cases for such a platform, ranging from knowledge-sharing in health care and life science to dashboards in financial services informed by XBRL data. “Once the platform is there we will implement at least a couple of these use cases on business requirements, and essentially we are going to see which are the most promising for business units,” Hausenblas says.

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On Friday, May 11, a group of Semantic Technology thought leaders from around the globe met with their host and colleague, Paul Miller, for the latest installment of the Semantic Link, a monthly podcast covering the world of Semantic Technologies. This episode includes a discussion about Semantics in the Financial Services Industry, and “the Linkers” were joined by special guest, Lee Feigenbaum, VP Marketing & Technology at Cambridge Semantics. Lee shared insights gained over many years working in the semantic technology field and with numerous customers in the financial services industry.
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Photo Courtesy: Flickr, epicharmus

Credit default swaps. Collateralized debt obligations. Moral hazards. The average person might find the financial services sector and its language as mystifying as some of those involved in the industry might find semantic technology. An event hosted by OMG and the EDM Council in New York City yesterday was aimed at demystifying the latter for Wall Street. But putting the technology to work there might help clarify the discourse around financial instruments for a wider audience, including the regulators who want to deal with concentration of risk issues that played a big role in the Wall Street meltdown.

One part of the picture is FIBO, the Financial Industry Business Ontology, which was the subject of two sessions at the event. An advance discussion of the topic with Thematix principals Elisa Kendall and Jim Rhyne, who was a panelist at the event, set the stage for us here at The Semantic Web Blog. “The primary practical use for an ontology like FIBO that is descriptive of various kinds of financial instruments, including so-called exotics, is that regulators and financial market participants get a common language to talk about things,” Rhyne explains. This is important, given that financial regulators try hard to be collaborative with the industry, pointing out the need, he says, for careful management of financial instruments, including recommendations about capital buffers to deal with downside risk and asking for timely reports of information that would allow them to assess the possibility that a systemic problem could occur rather than directly intervening by stopping trades.

Especially in the derivatives marketplace, there is a lot of “funky terminology,” he says, and not all of it is as well-understood as it should be. Different parties and different parts of the marketplace may call the same instrument by different terms, and one of FIBO’s aims is to provide a common vocabulary.

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The International Journal of Business and Systems Research has released an article entitled XBRL, semantic web and web services. The article is available here for a fee. The abstract states, “Computer and information technology innovations have revolutionised how business is conducted and how information is exchanged across systems. Technologies, such as eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), semantic web and web services, have emerged to transform the landscape of business information provision, exchange and consumption.” Read more

If you missed the live webcast with Drew Warren of Recognos Financial and Bryan Bell of Expert System, the recording is now available and posted below. 

Description

The software that runs computers is getting smarter every day. Semantic technology allows computers to understand the meaning of words —content and context— helping put users in touch with the right information at the right time.

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Innovation in this market is a mixed bag and most of it is below the radar. There is some movement at the consumer level with very simple legal templates. At the other extreme, there is a visionary attempt to make all legal information open source, called Law.gov. We also see movement in the legal work for early stage venture financing; while this is small, it is interesting because this is a community that does not shy away from innovation. In other areas where we would expect to see progress, such as legal xml, very little is happening.

This matter to all of us. The law is “the operating system of business”. It has to work right and it has to be open and low cost.

Read on to see how we might get a better operating system for business.

(Photo: Mike Atkins/Flickr)

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