[Asterisk-Users] Re: Stuck. Extenions.conf? Realtime? MySQL?

[Nic Hughes]

"Douglas Garstang" <dgarstang at oneeighty.com>  wrote:

>Boy, am I stuck...
>
>I'm officially ready to toss Asterisk out the window. I have to admit it isn't necessarily all the fault of Asterisk either. It just seems that every option I turn to suddenly ends in failure. I don't know if it's me that's bitten of more than I can chew with this project, or maybe Asterisk just isn't mature enough yet.
>
>Nothing complicated really.... Just a carrier class solution, with advanced custom routing, incoming and outgoing number blocking (at user/company and global level) and whitelisting, findme/followme, user specific pic codes and rate centres based on number dialled, blocking of specific star code prefixed features, different caller ID based on intra company calls, outside calls, calls overriden to use alternate caller id with feature codes, and not to mention it all has to be HA.
>
>  
>

At the risk of stating the obvious it appears clear from this that you 
have taken on a complex software development project and you should 
treat it accordingly. The fact that the underlying Asterisk software is 
providing you with a number of telephony capabilities does not mean you 
do not have to develop your own application nor can it make developing 
your own application any easier than its own inherent complexity.

Going right back to basics you have two ways forward:
1. Outsource it - probably best if software development is not your core 
business
2. Run it as a software development project - i.e. adopt a methodology, 
have a project plan etc.

Most of the things you mention seem feasible enough but I doubt if any 
of them are simple and when you layer several non-trivial tasks on top 
of one another you have an amount of complexity that needs to be taken 
seriously.

I don't think from what you have said that Asterisk is the problem, if 
there is a problem it may just be that OSS sometimes tempts us in to 
bite off more than we can chew. If you are hitting specific issues with 
Asterisk then I'm afraid you are going to have to deal with them one at 
a time, I would love to tell you that this is not the case with 
commercial software but that would make me a liar so I won't. You are 
writing a complex application that requires the integration of multiple 
3rd party technologies, this is bound to be a frustrating experience. On 
the other hand this is what most commercial software development 
projects are like and most of them get there in the end so if the 
payback is worth it hang on in there.

--
Nic