Adding XML to the MIS Curriculum: Lessons from the Classroom

eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is a new technology that is currently being extolled by many industry experts and software vendors. Potentially it represents a platform independent language for sharing information over networks in a way that is much more seamless than with previous technologies. It is extensible in that XML serves as a "meta" language--one that defines the rules for creating specific vocabularies for different industries and applications. At this point, two to five new industry vocabularies are being created each week. Major XML applications are now being defined for finance, accounting, supply chain management, e-commerce, and other functional areas in business. While it is still in its early stages of development, it is unclear how the MIS curriculum and that of the business school in general should react to this new technology. This paper will provide some background for the study of XML and will suggest how the study of XML can be integrated into the MIS curriculum. To aid in this process, three sample exercises are also presented that have been developed and tested in the classroom. (Contains 5 figures and 2 tables.)