Do VoiceXML and VoicePHP actually compete?

This is my personal opinion - a comment on the following blog posting: 

With VoicePHP, you can write applications for your business or your mobile phone. Knowledge of PHP is sufficient since it’s the same old PHP which now enables you to create voice applications. There was the earlier XML version called VoiceXML, but due to limitations in XML mainly in designing selective and iterative programming structures, it has not been successful. 

My Response:

VoiceXML, like HTML isn’t, and wasn’t ever designed as a programming language. It is a presentation language. VoiceXML is highly successful and massively deployed, however, the business logic of generating VoiceXML dialogs is done in the programmer’s favourite application environment (Enterprise Java is very popular for example).

So, I think you are missing the point to feel that VoiceXML needs “beefing up” somehow - separation of concerns: presentation and business logic, has been one of the major forces that has driven the incredible success and adoption of the web, alongside the open standards that have allowed a vibrant market place for technology, infrastructure and tools vendors to compete - and thus for organisations and enterprises to benefit. This is where the real value is, and VoiceXML emulates this paradigm - and its growth in adoption is testament to this.

VoicePHP probably has its place - and personally I will enjoy tinkering with it to see what it offers me - but you have to get it in context - I don’t think it even plays in the same space as VoiceXML.

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Comments

[Jason Goecke]

Yes, but why have a translation layer rather than using a platform that lets you get on with interacting with the underlying systems? VoiceXML's key goal is to ensure portability between proprietary (aka - commercial license) platforms. If the entire stack is open source, why constrain yourself?

Have a look at Adhearsion, an open source Ruby-based framework:

http://adhearsion.com