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

["HUGHES,MARK (Non-HP-FtCollins,ex1)" <mark_hughes@non.hp.com>]

>From: Michael Brennan [mailto: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.

  Seconded.  gzip is simple, fast, ubiquitous, standard, and gives you far
better compression than any binary substitution scheme ever will.

  After all, gzip compresses both the tags *and* the content, and can
identify repeated sequences of <tag>content</tag>.  Binary encodings
can only compress the tags...

-- <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>