VoiceXML Review - Letter from the Editor

Volume 1, Issue 8- August/September 2001

Dear Readers,

In this issue of The VoiceXML Review, we take a look at some real hands-on VoiceXML projects.

We begin with a case study by Lionel Lavallee of HP Bluestone, entitled Integrating VoiceXML and An Application Server: A Case Study. If you are an enterprise developer who lives and breathes Java Beans, J2EE, etc., this article is for you. Lionel's article is soft of case study/tutorial describing how they've integrated VoiceXML into their application server product. You can download the VoiceXML code and evaluation copies of the software you need to try it out yourself.

Our second article, an experience report entitled VoiceXML Experience Report: Flight Tracker Voice Application written by Dr. David Noever of Mobular. David's article is an interesting account of his experiences developing flight-tracking application in VoiceXML. This article helps one appreciate the fact that writing a real VoiceXML application involves a whole lot more than grammar design and making sure your markup is well formed. After reading the article, go ahead and call ext. 135802 and try the application yourself.

John Hicks of SpeechBrowser brings us an article entitled Object-Oriented VoiceXML that addresses the question of how to reuse VoiceXML code. The articles presents a set of server-side Java classes representing VoiceXML tags. These classes can be stitched together into higher-level "composite" classes that in term can generate reusable VoiceXML dialogues and/or applications. John also touches on how his team has successfully integrated non-VoiceXML legacy code into VoiceXML applications.

Are you looking for ways to improve the responsiveness of your VoiceXML app? Rob Marchand's trusty First Words column covers the topics of how caching and prefetching work in the VoiceXML language.

In the Speak & Listen column this month, Jeff Kunins gets into the nitty-gritty of post-hang-up processing in VoiceXML, as well as cookies. Please try to stump Jeff next month with that tough VoiceXML question you've been struggling with by sending it to .

Sincerely,

Jonathan Engelsma
Editor-in-Chief, VoiceXML Review

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