Cell Store Documentation v26.8.0

This tutorial is aimed at developers who need to get started using the cell store REST API.

Introduction

Until a few years ago, most companies were generating fiscal reports using text processors and spreadsheets. A lot still are today. This is inefficient and expensive. Excel and Word files were flowing from mailbox to mailbox, information was rekeyed on the fly, copied over, reorganized manually. In addition to the amount of time spent on these processes, this was very error-prone.

The XBRL standard, which has emerged in the past few years, has gained importance. It gives a framework and a standardized format for producing financial reports (among others) in such a way that they can be automatically processed and generated by machines. Some regulating authorities such as the SEC have already made its usage mandatory.

While this is a cost-sinking innovation, it also revolutionizes access to information: using latest database technologies, XBRL reports can be made queryable. In particular, it is possible to validate that the reports do not contain a certain number of errors, to impute non-submitted information, and also to derive new information using data at an unprecedented scale (across potentially all XBRL reports in the world, and much beyond).

Cell stores are a new database paradigm that brings XBRL archives to the database world. With cell stores, you can query across companies, periods, and even countries. Today, cell stores can already be used in real time at a scale of hundreds of gigabytes of data — and growing.

But most importantly, cell stores hide the complexity of the XBRL syntax and of database technologies to the user. They are exposed to business users via a familiar spreadsheet-like user interface, using the tables they have liked so much for decades now.