My main goal for doing a SPARQL query against XBRL data was to be able to pull out the same bit of information from multiple companies’ reports at once, and it turned out to be much less work than I thought it would be. Here is the result of my query for interest expense figures across several companies:

In trying to learn more about XBRL, an important first step is to find software, and I don’t want to pay for it. Open Source is even better, in case I want to build some application around it. I’ve written up my research experience with each free package I heard about, roughly in most promising to least promising order. For sample input, most of my testing used XBRL filings to the SEC by large multinational corporations specializing in carbonated brown sugar water.