1.1. Voice services and applications

Before diving into VoiceXML, we first need to understand the current “state of the art” in voice application technology - the “pre-VoiceXML” voice application landscape.

1.1.1. Traditional applications

Voice applications have traditionally been hosted on a machine called an IVR. This machine is typically a special purpose computer outfitted with telephony hardware, possibly speech processing hardware and software, and some sort of a dialog engine that executes the call-flow logic.

The pre-VoiceXML dialog engines may or may not be particularly programmable. For example, a voice-mail system is a simple IVR application but its call flow is more or less “hard-wired” only permitting callers to leave voice messages ...

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