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

[John Todd]

[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




JT

-- 
John Todd
jtodd at digium.com        +1-256-428-6083
Asterisk Open Source Community Director