Reporting Insurance Information to the SEC using XBRL

At the recent NAVA Conference in Baltimore M.D., one of the presentations by Mike Willis from XBRL presented the idea of reporting insurance (variable) product data to the SEC using XBRL. Naturally as an industry we've already invested more than a decade developing an industry standard data model and dictionary through ACORD (the ACORD Life and Annuity Standards), and more recently the past six years we've developed a richly detailed Product Profile for Annuites (PPfA) specifications thru NAVA... so the question begins with how do we leverage what we've developed in PPfA to satisfy the requirements/needs of the SEC/NASD? Interesting question and one worth exploring.

The first... of a series of questions begins with:
* What information does the SEC want
* How much of that is in the current PPfA's
* How hard to add what's missing
* How about Life and other lines?
* How does this mesh into XBRL
* How does his link with efforts towards a semantic understanding of insurance data (RDF, OWL)

Notes on Software Product Lines

I wandered into the concept of "Software Product Lines" and am deeply intrigued.

It seems to be an evolutionary step beyond SOA or SOOS, to a means of developing software solutions with change, flexibility (aka versions) built into the design - treating the assets of a product from models, requirements, and other artifacts through to components in a designed (read: architected) manner to maximize the proverbial goal of reuse.

Some links I found from the onset:
The main site - hosted by Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/productlines/

Microsofts 'Software product Lines' approach via Software Factories
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/practices/aa718951.aspx

Other links:
More readings on Microsofts appraoch to Software Product Line, Software Factories:
The case for Software Factories Part 1: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480032.aspx
Part 2 - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms954817.aspx
Part 3 - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms954811.aspx
Part 4 -

Use of Software Factories for HL7 (Could we do for ACORD Life Standards???)
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms954602.aspx

Developing a Domain Specifc Language for An Service Oriented Archtecture (... in Insurance??)
The Avaneda Case Study - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb381702(vs.80).aspx


Insurance Case Studies:
Vital Forsikring ASA
Pension Insurance Provider Reduces Time-to-Market with Scalable Solution
- http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=49164