Automated analysis of regulatory filings has become much easier since the SEC introduced the XBRL, a free, open, and global standard for the electronic representation and exchange of business reports. XBRL is based on XML; it relies on taxonomies that define the meaning of the elements of a report and map to tags that highlight the corresponding information in the electronic version of the report. One such taxonomy represents the US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

The SEC introduced voluntary XBRL filings in 2005 in response to accounting scandals before requiring this format for all filers since 2009 and continues to expand the mandatory coverage to other regulatory filings. The SEC maintains a website that lists the current taxonomies that shape the content of different filings and can be used to extract specific items.

The following datasets provide information extracted from EX-101 attachments submitted to the Commission in a flattened data format to assist users in consuming the data for analysis. The data reflects selected information from the XBRL-tagged financial statements. It currently includes numeric data from the quarterly and annual financial statements, as well as certain additional fields (for example, Standard Industrial Classification (SIC)).

There are several avenues to track and access fundamental data reported to the SEC:

• As part of the EDGAR Public Dissemination Service (PDS), electronic feeds of accepted filings are available for a fee. 
• The SEC updates RSS feeds every 10 minutes, which list structured disclosure submissions.
• There are public index files for the retrieval of all filings through FTP for automated processing.
• The financial statement (and notes) datasets contain parsed XBRL data from all financial statements and the accompanying notes.

The SEC also publishes log files containing the internet search traffic for EDGAR filings through SEC.gov, albeit with a six-month delay.