Study On CTI Middleware Based On EHMB

With the rapid development and popularization of Call Center, the technology of computer telephony integration (CTI, Computer Telephony Integration) has become more and more mature. In order to improve the efficiency of CTI development, CTI middleware comes into being. However, the traditional pattern of development of CTI middleware has its defects. Because it has very strong constraint in some specific domain, the lack of certain flexibility becomes the problem. Besides, it is also lack of some necessary extendible mechanism and reusable mechanism. All these defects constrain the further development of CTI software, so, it is very necessary to develop a new mechanism to solve the problem.In this paper, firstly, we analyze the software architecture, software reuse and the design constraint of CTI middleware in Call Center. According to the analysis, we propose that a good CTI middleware should be constructed on the base of some software architecture, which can be reused and extended easily. Then based on the deep study of the characteristic of hierarchy message bus (HMB) software architecture style, and according to HMB's shortcomings and the special restrictions of CTI domain, we come up with a new software architecture style, that is extended hierarchy message bus (EHMB, Extended Hierarchy Message Bus). Besides, we give deep study on EHMB's component model, essentials and other improvement mechanisms. Finally, we successfully develop a CTI middleware based on EHMB, and give special discussion on the designing and realization of the most important components, such as Message Bus, API Engine and SoftPhone. According to the effect of the development and running, EHMB style successfully improved the development efficiency of the middleware, the reusable granularity and the capability of extension.