RE: Request: Techniques for reducing the size of XML instances

[Michael Brennan <Michael_Brennan@allegis.com>]

Plain old vanilla gzip compression works great. If transmitting XML over
HTTP (a very common use case), the HTTP spec explicitly permits compression
of content. You can include "Content-Encoding: gzip" as an HTTP header, and
achieve a high-level of compression (80%-90% in my experience) while still
fully conforming to the HTTP spec. The only downside is that many XML
messaging toolkits may not properly support this.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roger L. Costello [mailto:costello@mitre.org]
> Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 9:07 AM
> To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: Request: Techniques for reducing the size of XML instances
> 
> 
> Hi Folks,
> 
> Does anyone have a summary of techniques for reducing the size of XML
> instances (as would be required in limited bandwidth applications)?
> 
> XML instance minus tags:
> 
> Are there techniques for reducing the size of XML instances by simply
> stripping off the tags (thus maintaining an ASCII document)?  
> [It is not
> clear to me how the receiver of such a tagless document would 
> regenerate
> the original instance document.]
> 
> Binary Compression:
> 
> I am sure that there are lots of tools to binary compress XML
> instances.  Does anyone have a summary of such tools?  /Roger