Advanced IVR Tutorial Lesson 2: Integrate with a Relational Database

Lesson 1 shows a generic Java action which can be used to do almost anything from an IVR application. This lesson shows a special Java action that is used to access and modify a relational database. There is nothing special about database Java actions. To IVR Studio, they are the same type of Java actions. However, since IVR applications and relational databases are so closely tied most customers use them in their own environment. For this reason, lesson 2 is dedicated to this topic.

The first part of this lesson uses a Java program for database access.

The second part uses the built-in Database action. By using this feature accessing and updating a relational database from your IVR application is much simpler. You no longer need to write a single line of code in order to access and update a relational database.

This lesson shows:

  1. Learn more about relational database
  2. Java Class using JDBC
  3. Create a Java action to check an entered password
  4. Use the result to determine which transition to take
  5. Get more information from the database
  6. Learn to use a Database Action

The Sample

The first step of this sample: IVR database Integration is included in IVR Studio. You can access it from the Library program menu. A typical interaction is listed below:

  1. The sample IVR application answers a call
  2. Plays a welcome message, asking the caller to enter his/her account number
  3. Caller enters account number
  4. System asks caller to enter password
  5. System checks account number and password against data saved in a relational database. If the password is incorrect, go back to step 2. If the caller has tried more than 3 times, hang up the call
  6. Plays protected information using Text-to-Speech