Posted by Robert G Laurin, IT Director on September 15, 2005 at 14:00:52:
Startford is currently installing & configuring a new phone system from Avaya that incorporate an Auto-Attendant and voice recognition system. Part of this implementation requires the Avaya SQL server to access data from Comet which is performed using XAP - this works fine. It allows the phone system to forward some information to the customer/students like their balance due, date of last payment received, date of last exam received, grades and date of next module shipment.
In the event that the customer/student's call is transfered to an agent/instructor, the call information is forwarded to the instructor's PC and if the student number was entered in the phone system by the caller, it is forwarded to Comet using the IP Gateway. This way when an agent/instructor receives a call, they have a screen pop that automatically displays the file of the person calling.(there's a demo of this if you want to see)
Unfortunately, all my test shows that there is a five seconds delay between the time the information is put on the IP stack and the time that Comet spits it out to the waiting software. I wrote a IP send & receive program pairs and can see the extra 5 seconds delay hapenning all the time (demo available). As I recall, Peter put that there to prevent sloppy programmers to hog a system if a status loop on IP gateway was too tight. Five seconds is an eternity in the IP realm. The proper solution to that problem back then, would had been to instruct the programmers to add their own pauses (1/18 seconds at the time).
We also have applications talking to IP barcode scanners, IP digital scales and IP printers. We are currently working on a real-time weight station project that would collect data using a combination of an omnidirectional barcode reader and a scale fitted in a conveyer belt assembly (weigth in motion). That requires very precise timing and cannot survive a 5 seconds pause.
Any possibility of making the IP response better ?