Logical Theory Describing Business Report

This document is a logical theory which describes a business report.

Glossary of Key Terms

Rudimentary Building Blocks: One of the primitive building blocks or objects of a report defined by the SBRM: report, fragment, fact set, aspect, aspect set, fact, comment, etc.

Report: Information published by a reporting entity at some point in time for some purpose. For example a financial report is a type of report. A report can be broken down into information fragments.

Fragment: A fragment is a set of one to many Fact Sets which go together some specific purpose within a report.

Fact Set: A fact set is a set of facts which go together (tend to be cohesive and share a certain common nature) for some specific purpose within a report. (Common synonym for Fact Set is Fact Table)

Aspect: An aspect describes a fact (an aspect is a property of a fact). An aspect or distinguishing aspect provides information necessary to describe a fact or distinguish one fact from another fact within a report. A fact may have only the three core aspects (entity, calendar period, concept) or zero to many additional distinguishing aspects. (Common synonyms for aspect are characteristic, dimension, and [Axis].)

Relation: The relation from one object of a report to another object or objects.

Aspect Set: Set of aspects that are used to describe a fact within a fact set.

Fact: A fact is reported. A fact defines a single, observable, reportable piece of information contained within a business report, or fact value, contextualized for unambiguous interpretation or analysis by one or more distinguishing aspects (properties of the fact). A fact value is one property of a fact. Every fact has exactly one fact value.

Parenthetical explanation: provide additional descriptive information about a fact.

Information Model: Combination of Concept Arrangement Pattern and Member Arrangement Pattern.

Concept Arrangement Pattern: Relation between concepts within the concept characteristic

Member Arrangement Pattern: Relations between values of a characteristic

Fragment Arrangement Pattern: Relationship between fragments or the order or sequence of fragments.

Property: Property or trait of an object.

Concept: Implementation of an Aspect. A core abstract. A Concept or Abstract is essentially the member or value of the Primary Item or [Line Items] dimension.

Rule: Rules guide, control, suggest, or influence behaviour. Rules cause things to happen, prevent things from happening, or suggest that it might be a good idea if something did or did not happen. Rules help shape judgment, help make decisions, help evaluate, help shape behaviour, and help reach conclusions.

Stock: Fact as of a specific point in time.

Flow: Fact for a period of time.

Grain: Grain is the level of depth of information or granularity.

List of Concept Arrangement Patterns

Set: Type of Concept Arrangement Pattern. (no mathematical relation or undescribed mathematical relation)

Roll Up: Type of Concept Arrangement pattern. Fact A + Fact B + Fact C = Fact D (a total) (mathematical relation)

Roll Forward: Type of Concept Arrangement Pattern. Beginning balance (stock) + changes (flow) = Ending balance (stock) (mathematical relation)

Adjustment: Type of Concept Arrangement Pattern. Originally stated balance + adjustments = restated balance (mathematical relation)

Variance: Type of Concept Arrangement Pattern. Amount (actual scenario) - Amount (projected scenario) = variance (mathematical relation)

Complex Computation: Type of Concept Arrangement Pattern. (mathematical relation)

Text Block: Type of Concept Arrangement Pattern.

Roll Forward Info: Type of Concept Arrangement Pattern.

Case for Machine Readable General Purpose Financial Report