Summary of current and prior versions of all RIXML Standards

The RIXML Standards Suite has included the following versions:

Documentation and schema files for all versions of the standards in the RIXML Standards Suite are below: 

RIXML Research Standard

RIXML Interactions Standards

RIXML Coverage Updates Standard

RIXML Roster Updates Standard

The RIXML Standards Suite

The RIXML Standards Suite is designed to provide a streamlined mechanism for buy-side firms, sell-side firms, vendors, and other firms involved with investment interactions and research to accomplish several tasks, including capturing the details of inter-firm interactions required to be captured by MiFID II regulations and the details of investment research. Designed with efficiency in mind, these standards leverage shared tags when possible, with specialized tags and tag sets developed to enable capturing specific content.

The Suite is structured as a set of XML schema files. None of these files is an entire standard by itself, but are combined into a number of different tag sets, each of which accomplishes a specific goal. In order to further improve efficiency, the standards leverage other tag sets (such as XBRL for content describing financial data) and ISO standards (such as language codes and market identifier codes) whenever possible to streamline the process of implementing and maintaining our standards on the back end.

The Standards

RIXML.org has created several distinct standards, each designed to accomplish a specific task. Each standard is comprised of tags from various schema files. The full description of each standard is available in its documentation.

The RIXML Research Standard provides a set of tags and rules that can be used to describe investment research documents, audio files, etc. Using the RIXML Research standard enables firms to improve the process of categorizing, aggregating, comparing, sorting, searching, and distributing global financial research.

The RIXML Interactions Standard provides a set of tags and rules that can be used to describe interactions involving research providers, research consumers, corporate representatives, and third-party experts. This standard was created to help firms comply with the changes to the EU’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II).

The RIXML Coverage Updates Standard gives a publisher the ability to communicate changes to its coverage universe, including updating the list of companies covered by a particular analyst.

The RIXML Roster Updates Standard enables a research publisher to communicate changes to the groups of people playing various roles on its behalf in the investment research marketplace (such as a financial services firm updating its roster of research analysts with aggregator partners).

Using the Suite

The standards in the RIXML Standards Suite are free for use by any individual or firm. Membership in the RIXML organization is not required. Documentation for each of the standards can be found on the relevant page.

Introduction

The primary objective of the RIXML Research Standard is to provide extensive capabilities for enhancing any piece of financial research content, in any form or media, with tagging (also called metadata) that allows research consumers to search, sort, commingle, parse, and filter the published research.

The RIXML Research Standard includes both a set of tags and a set of rules to ensure consistent usage of these tags. The RIXML Research Standard contains a large number of tags, enabling extremely detailed tagging of research content. However, very few tags are required, so firms can decide what level of tagging works best for them and for the content of the research items they are describing.

To facilitate adoption of the standard, we have defined a subset of tags, known as RIXML Research Level One, that constitutes the highest-priority tags. This subset can be used for the initial implementation of the standard, or can be used as the long-term implementation.

The RIXML Research Standard is part of the RIXML Standards Suite, which is also includes the RIXML Interactions Standard, the RIXML Analyst Roster Standard, and the RIXML Coverage Standard.

Current production release:  RIXML Research Standard 2.5

The current production version of the RIXML Research Standard is version 2.5. It was released on September 21, 2017, and became the production version on December 15, 2017.

A summary of the changes and enhancements included in this release can be found in the press release announcing the finalization of this version.

In-depth information about these changes can be found in the Release Notes.  Version 2.5 does not break backward-compatibility with prior versions. That is, a RIXML instance document that validates against version 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4 will also validate against version 2.5

Older versions

Older versions of the RIXML Research Standard can be found on the Version History page.

Documentation

Documentation for the RIXML Research Standard includes a Data Dictionary, an Implementation Guide, and the release notes.

Data Dictionary

The purpose of the RIXML v2.5 Data Dictionary is to assist readers in their understanding of the RIXML Research Standard. It outlines the approach we took in creating the RIXML standard and also explains some fundamental concepts such as XML, object modeling, schemas, etc. Diagrams of the RIXML object model are included, as are definitions for the elements and attributes. 
Download the RIXML Research Data Dictionary(.pdf)

Implementation Guide

The RIXML Research Implementation Guide is intended to be used in conjunction with the other components of the release. The Implementation Guide outlines the approach taken by RIXML.org in creating the RIXML Research Standard, explains the fundamental concepts regarding tagging and XML, and provides guidance for implementing the RIXML Research Standard. It also explains some of the core principles of the standard and defines some best practices for implementing it. 
Download the RIXML Research Implementation Guide (.pdf)

Level One Addendum

RIXML Research Level One was initially launched as part of the release materials in v2.2 of the RIXML Research Standard. The Research Level One definition is merely a subset of the tags already present in the RIXML Research schema. The subset was defined through a series of prioritization exercises originally conducted in 2006 and carried forward through subsequent releases. The purpose of the Level One subset is to provide RIXML Research adopters with some guidance on where to start. The full RIXML Research schema is small by comparison to other industry standards, but still large enough to be daunting to some adopters. Level One lists the highest-priority tags. When we release an update to the RIXML Research schema, we review its impact on the Level One Definition and include an Addendum document in the release materials. 
Download the Level One Addendum (.pdf)

Release Notes

This document highlights the changes between version 2.4 of the RIXML Research Standard and version 2.5. 
Download the Release Notes. (.pdf)

Reference Links

Improving efficiency and streamlining workflows are core concepts behind RIXML. Therefore, RIXML standards leverage ISO or other standards already in common use in the investment industry whenever possible.  Learn more about the other standards utilized within the RIXML Standards Suite.

Schema

There are three XSD files used by the RIXML Research Standard.  These represent the relationships and components as defined by the object model. These files can also be used to validate instance documents to ensure they are RIXML-compliant. 

The following schema files contain the tags used in the RIXML Research Standard: 

RIXML Research main schema – contains the research-standard specific tags used in the RIXML Research Standard

RIXML Common schema – contains the tags used in multiple places in the Research Standard and/or used in more than one standard in the RIXML Standards Suite

RIXML Data Types schema – contains the valid values for the enumeration lists used in the RIXML Standards Suite

Introduction

In order to comply with the European Union’s revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (commonly referred to as MiFID II), the member firms of RIXML have collaborated to define a new standard – the RIXML Interactions Standard. This standalone standard leverages existing tag sets in the RIXML Standards Suite, re-using and adapting the relevant parts of the existing RIXML schema, while also adding interaction-specific tags.

There are various types of interactions:

• Some take place between one service provider and one service consumer (e.g. an onsite one-on-one meeting)
• Some take place between one service provider and more than one service consumer (e.g., a conference call)
• Some take place between one service provider, one or more service consumers, and a third party expert (e.g., a session at a conference)

In all of these cases, the service provider will provide a separate interactions record to each service consumer with information about the event, but it will include ONLY the attendee information that pertains to that consumer. The RIXML Interactions Standard accommodates both one-on-one interactions and more complex ones.

The RIXML Interactions Standard is part of the RIXML Standards Suite, which is also includes the RIXML Research Standard, the RIXML Analyst Roster Standard, and the RIXML Coverage Standard.

Current production release: Interactions Standard 2.0

The current production version of the RIXML Interactions Standard is version 2.0. It was released for public comment on July 18, 2019 and became the production version on September 5, 2019.

A summary of the changes and enhancements included in this release can be found in the press release announcing the finalization of this version.  In-depth information about these changes can be found in the RIXML Interactions 2.0 Data Dictionary.

Note that version 2.0 does break backward-compatibility with version 1.0. That is, a RIXML Interactions instance record that validates against version 1.0 will not also validate against version 2.0. The RIXML Interactions Working Group did not take this decision lightly, but we feel that the benefits outweigh the downsides, and felt that making these changes as early as possible will enable that the standard to more fully meet the needs of the industry.

Older versions

Older versions of all RIXML Interactions Standard can be found on the Version History page.

Documentation

Interactions Data Dictionary

The RIXML Interactions Data Dictionary provides the tags used in the standard, with definitions and usage guidance. It outlines the approach we took in creating the RIXML Interactions Standard and explains some fundamental concepts such as XML, object modeling, schemas, etc. Diagrams of the RIXML Interactions object model provide a visual representation of the tags and tag relationships.

RIXML Interactions Data Dictionary (.pdf)

Release Notes

This document highlights the changes between version 1.0 of the RIXML Interactions Standard and version 2.0.

Reference Links

Improving efficiency and streamlining workflows are core concepts behind RIXML. Therefore, RIXML standards leverage ISO or other standards already in common use in the investment industry whenever possible.  Learn more about the other standards utilized within the RIXML Standards Suite.

Schema

The RIXML Interactions Schema is the set of actual XSD files that represent the relationships and components as defined by the object model. These files can also be used to validate interaction records to ensure they are RIXML-compliant. 

The following schema files contain the tags used in the RIXML Interactions Standard:

RIXML Interactions main schema – contains the interactions-specific tags used in the RIXML Interactions Standard

RIXML Common schema – contains the tags used in multiple places in the Research Standard and/or used in more than one standard in the RIXML Standards Suite

RIXML Data Types schema – contains the valid values for the enumeration lists used in the RIXML Standards Suite