[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Binary XML
From: Joshua Allen [mailto:joshuaa@m...] Joshua writes: >Actually, there should be no need for the user to manually create a >compression type. The source code for the compressor is available; you will >notice that it simply scans the XML and uses some knowledge derived from >that analysis to "prep" the document for passing through zlib (the freely >available linkable library implementing gzip). So in a sense you could >consider this "gzip on steroids". Ok, so there is a way to automate the path based user compression. How good is the analysis? I was giving this some thought in context of schema based XML where one can know apriori, the potential paths just as one can use the structure to know the potential queries. I haven't opened the code, so is the automation "A" means or "the" only means provided? In other words, can a human user provided with a tool (say schema-based) prepare a set of candidate paths to fine tune the compression. It might be tedious but considering that the majority of transactions based on XML documents usually evolves into a finite family of types, it can be worth it. Consider it one more example of "front-loading the pain". >(Of course, you would have to convert the >proprietary data type to XML to give XMill something to work with, and would >thereby be embedding some hints about the structure of the data, so you are >right about user involvement) In context of my original question, that is OK because XML is what I care about coming out the gate. That I need to XSL or persist XML is fine because I am assuming that (perhaps naively). I leave the issues of the proprietary data types to another day. My interest is in a general purpose compression for XML if WBXML is not that. >Text-based XML was fast >presumably because of gzip-based compression on the wire. Since XMill >essentially uses gzip for the heavy lifting, you could expect the processing >burden to be just about the same, but with better compression. Ok, so this augments gzip by reorganizing/regrouping. I note they state that even though compression is better, the performance is about the same which contradicts the standing wisdom that better compression is bought at the cost of performance. >I personally >would have liked to see some COM and Java wrappers for XMill freely >available (not just transmission; think about in-memory caching for >expensive-to-create but infrequently used XML), but I gave up after getting >bogged down in the spaghetti. I think researchers write such sloppy code as >a way to give the rest of us something to feel good about. That is what I expect Microsoft to do or enhance. You build frameworks. I apply them. :-) It may be that the XMill technique is general enough that it is worth building components from scratch for release as part of the Visual toolkits or open source. Len Bullard Intergraph Public Safety clbullar@i... http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti. Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h
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