Pilot program uses XBRL for reports.

• Position: Business Briefs - Nasdaq, Microsoft Corp. and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP launch pilot program to provide investors with remote access to financial data - Brief Article

The Nasdaq stock exchange, Microsoft Corp. and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP have launched a pilot program to provide investors with remote access to financial data from five years of financial reports for 21 Nasdaq-listed companies. The data, which is formatted in eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) and publicly available via a Nasdaq-hosted Web Service, will showcase XBRL's ability to allow for easy comparisons of the financials of companies within a particular industry, like semiconductors. Nasdaq will be actively recruiting its listed companies to participate in the pilot program in the future.

Financial statement information tagged in XBRL can help streamline the analysis process and ultimately help all players in the financial information supply chain by eliminating manual data entry while improving the usability of the financial statement information for other purposes, such as loan documents or government fi1ings. Information is entered only once, allowing that same information to be rendered in any form, such as a printed financial statement, an HTML document for a company's Web site, an EDGAR filing document with the SEC, a raw XML file, IRS tax filing or other specialized...