Contents tagged with .NET

  • VoiceXML on Speech Server

    1 Comment

    Yesterday I posted about an issue with Speech Server and Vista. One reader named Bill asked a question in the comments. My response was a bit long for a comment so I decided to turn it into a separate post instead.

    Hey Marc, are you using Microsoft Speech Server with VXML?  If so, what hardware are you using on it?  Also, does MSS support CCXML?
    -Bill

    Yes, I'm using quite a bit of VoiceXML. Most of the applications I work on are written to run against the Nuance Voice Platform. I've been using VXML so that I could run them against either platform (or any other platform for that matter).

    There are some issues that I ran into where I was using Nuance specific properties (example) that Microsoft doesn't have VXML equivalents for. In those cases I needed to write them using the Speech Server managed model.

    The key thing to keep in mind is that Microsoft has implemented the VXML spec pretty much verbatim. So as long as your application is pure VXML you should be fine.

    I haven't put Speech Server through any sizing tests so I'm not sure what the hardware requirements will be in the end. That said, my development machine is a DELL D830 with 4GB of RAM running Vista Ultimate. In the lab I'm using a DELL 1950 with 4GB of RAM running Windows Server 2003. In both cases I'm using a Dialogic DMG2000 gateway.

    As for CCXML, they don't support it and I don't see that changing. I actually think CCXML is going to go the way of SALT. With only Voxeo supporting a real CCXML implementation I don't think there is going to be a lot of call for it. Also, everything you would want to do with CCXML can be done using Speech Server's Managed API. This is just a guess on my part, I don't have any inside knowledge as to what Microsoft's roadmap looks like.

  • Reinstalling Microsoft Speech Server on Windows Vista

    3 Comments

    If you're thinking of uninstalling/reinstalling Microsoft Speech Server on Windows Vista then this post might prove helpful.

    It seems that Speech Server Setup doesn't do such a good job uninstalling itself from Vista. And when you reinstall the server it fails to properly configure IIS. Namely it has a number of problems dealing with the *.speax exemption. This results it 404.2 and 500 errors being returned by IIS when you attempt to launch a Speech Server application.

    The workaround I've found for this issue requires manually mapping the handler for *.speax in your application's web.config. Adding the following to the <system.webServer> section will map IIS to the correct handler:

    <system.webServer>
    <handlers>
    <remove name="MSSCustomMap" />
    <add name="MSSCustomMap" path="*.speax" verb="*" modules="IsapiModule" scriptProcessor="C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll" resourceType="Unspecified" requireAccess="Script" responseBufferLimit="0" />
    </handlers>
    </system.webServer>

  • .NET 3.0 Drops pre-XP Support

    15 Comments

    I was looking at the .NET 3.0 site today and noticed something I had previously missed. Under Supported Operating Systems it lists the following:

    • Microsoft Windows 2003 Server Service Pack 1 (SP1)
    • Windows XP SP2
    • Windows Vista Release Candidate

    The removal of 9x and NT from the mix was expected. But the removal of Windows 2000 SP3 surprised me quite a bit.

    A lot of people are just now starting to cycle out their Windows 2000 servers. I wonder if rather than leading to faster server replacement this lead to slower adoption of .Net 3.0.

    I fully understand why they want to focus on the new platforms but I was a bit surprised by it. Especially when you consider that .NET 3.0 is - from my understanding of it - really just 2.0 with WinFX support.

  • Visual Studio 2005 SDK - August 2006

    1 Comment

    I while back I notices that there was going to be an August release of the VS2005 SDK. There was a a nice blurb on the Microsoft website about it

    The August 2006 v3 RTM is the next milestone in the VS 2005 SDK. This RTM release contains updated VS Integration sample and documentation content, including updates to the Team System SDK bits to make them more usable ( including whitepapers in the Doc-set, exploding all the sample zips so the files are all installed ), the IronPython end-end integration sample with Web Projects support for both web site and web application projects, updated wizards ( using the new Editor reference code from v2 ) new and Powertoys including the Extensibility Explorer in-memory hierarchy sample that browses installed Packages, Services, ToolWindows, Editors, and Project Systems..

    But so far the link for this version has remained dead. I'm not sure if this is an oversight or not.

    Thanks to Gabriel Lozano-Morán however I was able to download it anyway. Turns out that while the link isn't working, the file is. You get get instructions on download it from here.