One of our NuGram IDE users recently asked us how well SISR, W3C’s specification for semantic tags, is supported by current speech recognition platforms. For the benefit of all, here is the current status for the major players in the field:
| IBM WVS | SISR April 2003 |
| Loquendo | SISR 1.0 compliant (1) |
| LumenVox | SISR 1.0 compliant (although the tag-format header is not standard) |
| Microsoft OCS 2007 Speech Server | SISR 1.0 compliant (1) |
| Nuance OSR | Proprietary semantic language based on ECMAScript |
| Nuance 8.5 | GSL + proprietary semantic language |
| Nuance v9 | SISR 1.0 compliant, with proprietary extensions (SWI objects) |
| Telisma | SISR 1.0 compliant (1) |
| Voxeo ASR | SISR 1.0 compliant |
(1) Based on information from the company website, we have not tested it yet.
As we can see, SISR is now prevalent in the latest offerings from the major ASR vendors. This, of course, doesn’t mean that the engine you have to use will support SISR. It’s going to be a while before the current installed base upgrades to SISR-compliant engines.
However, if the engine you need to use happens to give you a choice (e.g., for backward compatibility reasons, Nuance v9 supports both SISR and SWI_semantics), it makes sense to seriously consider using SISR. Your grammars will be much more portable across engines (to a certain extent, of course) and the time taken to master it will be a good investment in the long term.
We should point out that NuGram IDE supports all leading semantic tag formats. What this means is that, for any supported tag format, the tool can compute the semantic interpretation in the exact same way the ASR engine does. So, whether or not you use SISR makes no difference: You can still use NuGram IDE to develop, debug, and test your grammars.
