Article ID:	157
Last updated:	January 12, 2007

Would you like to...

Print this page

Post a comment

User Opinions

No users have voted.

---

How would you rate this answer?

Helpful

Not helpful

Thank you for rating this answer.

Audium offers variables as a mechanism for components to share data with each other, in two forms: element data and session data.

Element data can be seen as variables that belong to a specific element. While that data can be read by all other components, it can only be created and changed by the element it belongs to. As the name suggests, element data can only be created by elements (excluding start and end of call events, the global error handler, hotevents, and XML decisions). Dynamic configurations are technically part of an element since they are responsible for configuring an element, so they can also create element data. Due to the fact that the variable belongs to the element, the variable namespace is contained within the element, meaning two elements can define element data with the same name without interfering with each other. To uniquely identify an element data variable, both the name of the element and the name of the variable must be identified.

Session data can be seen as variables that are global to the call session. Unlike element data, session data can be created and modified by all components (except the global error handler, hotevents, and XML decisions). Since session data is not associated with an element, it is identified by a single name. Session data set by one component will overwrite existing session data that has the same name.

There are two situations where session data may be created automatically by the system:

• If the voice browser passes additional arguments to Audium Call Services when the call is first received, these additional arguments will be added as session data with the arguments’ name/value pairs translated to the session data name and value (both as Strings). For example, if the voice browser calls the URL: http://myserver.com/Audium/Server?audium_application=MyApp&SomeData=1234 this will create session data named "SomeData" with a value of "1234" in every call session of the application "MyApp".
• If an Audium voice application performs an application transfer to another application and the developer has chosen to pass element data and/or session data from the source application to the destination application, then this data will appear as session data in the destination application (the element data and session data is renamed before it is passed to the destination application). Please refer to the Audium Studio documentation for more information on application transfers.