A methodology for application development for spoken language systems

A major bottleneck in the development of practical spoken language (SL) applications is the interface between the SL system and back-end application software. In theory, the range of potential back-end software for an SL interface is unlimited, but integration of an SL system with other software requires adapting the SL system to conform to the input formats of the back end. This is typically accomplished by ad hoc, labor-intensive methods, which are highly application-specific. Some SL systems have addressed this problem by attempting to handle only relational database interface applications, but this approach limits the usefulness of such systems, since relational databases represent only a fraction of the applications which could benefit from an SL interface. This paper describes a general, flexible, rule-based approach to integrating SL applications to arbitrary back-end software.