Categorizing Efficient XML Compression Schemes

Web services are Extensible Markup Language (XML) applications mapped to programs, objects, databases, and comprehensive business functions. In essence, Web services transform XML documents into and out of information technology systems. As more businesses turn to web services data transfer, XML has become the language of web services. Unfortunately, the structure of XML results in extremely verbose documents, often 3 times larger than ordinary content files. As XML becomes more common through Web services applications, its large file sizes increasingly burden the systems that must utilize it. This paper provides a qualitative overview of existing and proposed schemes for efficient XML compression, proposes three categories for relating XML compression scheme efficiency for Web services, and makes recommendations relating to efficient XML compression based on the proposed categories of XML documents. The goal of this paper is to aid the practitioner and Web services manager in understanding the impact of XML document size on Web services, and to aid them in selecting the most appropriate schemes for applications of XML compression for Web services.