We know, we know. You've been hearing about the coming XBRL revolution for the past three years. So far, there's been a lot more talking about the coming revolution than the coming of the coming revolution.

HTML, XML, FpML, FinXML, MDDL ... the acronyms are dizzying, but the standards behind them promise to be the wave of the future for financial-services firms - simplifying and standardizing everything from news to market data to trade information. And one XML-based standard, in particular, is on its way to achieving this in the area of financial statements, performance reports, accounting records and other financial information.

Technology didn't prevent the failure of Enron, but it could have made it easier for investors and regulators to see trouble spots in the company's financials. Developed by members of the accounting and software industries, the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL; www.xbrl.org) is a fast-maturing specification that aims to automate the business information supply chain and make it more transparent at the same time.

The promise of XML (define) to help streamline and expand the collection and sharing of data is arriving at a federal financial institution that ensures the soundness of many of the nation's banks.

The future delivery of financial reports will be digital; the question of which information exchange language will become the de facto standard remains unanswered. Currently, most digital representations of financial information are coded in hypertext markup language (HTML), which controls the way information is displayed but does not recognize content, limiting its usefulness. The HTML format does not easily allow for the searching, analysis, or manipulation of information.

Believe it or not, there's an emerging technology standard that has the potential to keep corporate accountants honest. In the wake of accounting scandals that have resulted in imprisoned corporate executives and distraught investors, eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), an offshoot of XML, promises to help make public companies more consistent in the way their financial data is transmitted, reported and presented to investors. XBRL could help prevent the financial chicanery allegedly engaged in by corporate entities such as Enron and WorldCom, experts say. It's a royalty-free, open standard under development by about 170 companies and agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which mandates a clearer set of rules by which companies make financial disclosures, has also added support to the XBRL initiative.

Amid a flurry of smaller announcements from the International XBRL Conference and Steering Board meeting in Berlin, Microsoft Corp. (Quote, Chart) claimed to be the first major technology company to adopt Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), an XML-based framework for publishing financial results that was formalized in December 2001.

The adoption of the recently developed Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) got a significant boost Tuesday, with the Nasdaq Stock Market, Microsoft and PricewaterhouseCoopers teaming up to show off the new platform for corporate reporting over the Internet.

Financial statement distributor EDGAROnline (Quote, Chart) is getting behind an emerging standard for exchanging financial data by launching XBRL (extensible business reporting language)-based products.

Information Technology is mostly jargon. But XBRL is something you cannot afford to ignore, if you are a CEO or CFO. Virtually all research and consultancy organisations from Gartner to PricewaterhouseCoopers are hailing XBRL as a revolutionary development set to sweep the finance and investment world.

XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) has been described as the universal business language, but so far, it's about as oft-spoken as Latin. In essence, XBRL brings context to numbers by tagging financial data points with information about that data, in effect standardizing it. The idea: to enable businesses to prepare, exchange, and analyze financial statements and the information they contain.

eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) brings the publication, exchange, and analysis of the complex financial information in corporate business reports into the dynamic and interactive realm of the internet. XBRL provides a common platform for critical business reporting processes and improves the reliability and ease of communicating financial data among users internal and external to the reporting enterprise.

Successful businesses have learned how to leverage the power of financial information. They have set up intranets, extranets, and corporate websites in an effort to help employees, investors, and financial analysts tap securely into the company's knowledge base of financial reporting. But until now an important ingredient was missing-the ability to describe financial information and data structures efficiently over a network. Once XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is adopted, it will enable organizations to create comprehensive, meaningful, and highly customizable financial reports at significantly reduced costs in a format compatible with most accounting applications

To say that the Internet has revolutionized the business world is a truism, of course. But there are sectors of the corporate world for which the promises of the Digital Age have remained just that—promises. Case in point: corporate reporting. The fact is that producing, reporting, and analyzing company information is still a labour-intensive, tedious process. Why? Because most companies still depend upon disparate systems to store and deploy much of the needed data—and those systems simply can't "talk" to each other. They speak different languages.

At a time when scrutiny of corporate financial statements has intensified, Microsoft, Nasdaq, and PricewaterhouseCoopers have launched a pilot program to test the viability of using XBRL to provide greater transparency of financial statements, making it easier to report financials over the Internet.

Today at the International XBRL Conference and Steering Board meeting in Berlin, Microsoft Corp. continued to demonstrate leadership in financial reporting by announcing that it has become the first technology company to publish its financial statements on the Internet using Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) an XML-based framework for financial reporting.

Sixty percent of senior execs at financial institutions believe that trust in their industry has been eroded by the corporate scandals of the past year, according to surveys and interviews by PricewaterhouseCoopers and The Economist Intelligence Unit, an Economist Group business.

Never underestimate the value of a common language. In September 1999, for example, NASA scientists controlling the Mars Climate Orbiter failed to convert crucial navigational data into the metric system. The result: The $125 million spacecraft crashed into the Red Planet.

Microsoft (Quote, Chart) and EDGAR Online (Quote, Chart), an online distributor of Securities and Exchange Commission documents, are teaming up in order to help companies eliminate the need to re-enter financial data about public companies into Excel spreadsheets.

-- Microsoft Corp. today announced that through its membership on the international Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) Project Committee, it is helping to develop and launch XBRL. XBRL is a free, new Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based specification that uses accepted financial reporting standards and practices to translate financial reports across all software and technologies, including the Internet. Members of the XBRL Project Committee represent financial, accounting, software and governmental communities from around the world.