Matt Kelly is editor-in-chief of pliance Week, a magazine and online newsletter on rporate ernance, risk, and mpliance. Prior to his role at pliance Week, Kelly was a reporter and ntributor on rporate mpliance and technology issues for magazines such as Time, Boston Business Journal, eWeek, and numerous other publications.

Well, after three years of hype and months of irritated anticipation, the XBRL mmunity finally has what it wanted:  an order from the U.S. Securities and Exchange mission that mandates use of XBRL technology in financial statements.

Somehow, though, I suspect the revolution will be neither tagged nor televised.

I applaud the SEC for adopting an idea that’s noble in theory. When I first started paying heed to XBRL in 2005, I dismissed it as a highfalutin IT dream with little real nsequence to investors. Three years later, I stood rrected; once XBRL reader software was produced, I uld see that it had some mighty attractive features and capability — but it still seemed to have little nsequence to investors.

I tend to divide the investor mmunity into two camps: the individuals who shout about stocks on eTrade and track their portfolios on Quicken software, and the professionals who do all manner of secretive analysis before making block purchases. And in three years of reporting about XBRL, I’ve heard nobody in either camp demand that mpanies start publishing financial data in XBRL. At best they’re enamored of the idea once I explain how XBRL works, but that’s where it begins and ends.

On the rporate side, executives’ attitudes have shifted in the last 12 months from a cynical skepticism to something like a benign curiosity. Now that mpanies have had several months to study the SEC’s mandate, few say they can’t achieve mpliance; they just don’t feel much urgency to do, beyond the SEC telling them to mply. All those sessions at XBRL International nferences touting the wonders of interactive data for internal reporting and operations? Not on anyone’s radar screens, especially in these st-nscious times. The SEC has mandated XBRL filings, so mpanies will prepare their reports, stick some XBRL instance documents at the end of their filings, and be done with it.