November / December 2002 Features

ARTICLE ONE

Enhancing VoiceXML Application Performance By Caching

By David Burke

The VoiceXML architectural model specifies a partitioning of application hosting, and application rendering (figure 1). Specifically, the application is served from a Web Server and is typically created dynamically within the framework of an Application Server or equivalent. The VoiceXML Interpreter renders the resultant VoiceXML document, transmitted across a network by HTTP, into a series of instructions interpreted by the Implementation Platform. Implied in this model is a geographical distribution of the application hosting environment and the VoiceXML platform and thus the incursion of network latencies. An application might make many subsequent requests for new VoiceXML documents during its lifetime and thus these latencies may have considerable adverse effects on performance. In this article we will discuss how caching can be used to enhance the performance of VoiceXML applications. Caching is a strategy for storing temporary 'objects' (e.g. VoiceXML resources) local to the VoiceXML Interpreter that can be employed by the application developer for optimising these latencies. In what follows we will use the phrase 'origin server' to denote the application hosting environment, and 'user agent' to refer to the VoiceXML Interpreter and Implementation Platform.

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ARTICLE TWO

Standardizing VoiceXML Generation Tools

By David L. Thomson

An area where we have an opportunity to make VoiceXML easier to use and more portable is in development and runtime tools. VoiceXML provides two significant advantages in authoring speech-enabled applications, when compared to previous methods. It allows a developer to build speech services with less effort and it allows applications written for one speech platform to run on another speech platform. These advantages are diminished, however, if software tools used to create and support VoiceXML code are inadequate or incompatible. The VoiceXML Tools Committee, under the direction of the VoiceXML Forum, has been working on methods for improving the quality and uniformity of tools as described below.

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IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (IEEE-ISTO).