[asterisk-dev] CSTA - Worth looking at again?

[BJ Weschke]

Tim Panton wrote:
> On 16 Oct 2008, at 02:16, John Todd wrote:
>
>   
>> [This has come up a few times over the last 4 years on this list and
>> others, but it has never before had enough people look at it who
>> understood perhaps what the benefits were, so I drag it out again
>> here for your amusement...]
>>
>>
>> Would a CSTA interface (or in a variant, uaCSTA) be a useful API
>> layer for Asterisk?  Would some of the PineMango goals be workable
>> with a CSTA method as the "language" portion of the communication?
>> Or would it merely be a monolithic module that would talk to the API
>> components as a discrete consumer/producer of messages to the various
>> components?  I'm largely ignorant of the details of where the API
>> discussion would layer into what something like CSTA could offer -
>> feel free to say that these two concepts are non-intersecting and
>> I'll drop it.
>>
>>
>> Regardless of CSTA's role in a potential "next-generation" fruit-like
>> API project, it still bears examination as a potential interface for
>> other Enterprise-ish platforms.  Microsoft's OCS/LCS Platform uses a
>> variant of uaCSTA over SIP, as does Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, and
>> others(?- need a list).  Of course, I'm not so interested in those
>> legacy PBX platforms, but the tools that third-party companies are
>> producing to bolt onto them are what sound like has some value.
>> Creating a CSTA interface to Asterisk would allow quick grafting of
>> "industry standard" tools onto an inexpensive and flexible OSS
>> back-end.
>>
>> Comments?
>>
>>
>> Base page:
>>   http://www.ecma-international.org/activities/Communications/TG11/cstaIII.htm
>>
>>
>> Here's an introduction (194kb):
>>  http://www.ecma-international.org/activities/Communications/TG11/CSTAoverview.pdf
>>
>>
>> This seems to be some of the documentation (4mb, 767 pages!):
>>  http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-269.htm
>>
>> CPAN module for CSTA (incomplete - Phase I only - need Phase III)
>>  http://search.cpan.org/~leifj/Net-CSTA-0.04/lib/Net/CSTA.pm
>>
>>     
>
> This is exactly the sort of thing we need to be able to implement at the
> framework level, based on the pinemango API level.
>
> If PineMango doesn't give us enough scope to implement CSTA, then it
> has failed (IMHO).
>
>   
 +1

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