Whither TAPI?

April 1996 / Reviews / Visual Toolkits for Audio Apps / Whither TAPI?

All the tool vendors covered in this roundup pledged support of Microsoft's TAPI, a telephony API for Windows. Interestingly, none of the packages we tested actually use it, though some are available in special TAPI versions. Instead, these programs use proprietary drivers to interface to the hardware.
There are pluses and minuses to this scheme. On the plus side, vendors can provide added value within their drivers. On the minus side, you can't use a telephony board that the vendor doesn't support. (Fortunately, most vendors support all the major brands.)
Ultimately, we expect TAPI will be available for every telephony board. But because it tends to make hardware look "ge neric," we expect the telephony industry to accept TAPI only grudgingly and to continue favoring approaches that allow greater product differentiation. For now, as long as vendors of VBXes and OCXes handle a wide range of hardware directly, there's no need to make TAPI support a prerequisite when you're looking for digital telephony tools.

Matthew Wilson
My approach to software engineering is far more pragmatic than it is theoretical--and no language better exemplifies this than C++.

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