Record compression
AssigneeElectronic Data Systems Corporation
InventorPeter D. Rail
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A system (10) for compressing and decompressing records includes a decompressed file (12) and a compressed file (14). A first record is stored in a first buffer (18) and a second record is stored in a second buffer (20). A vertical compression technique compares the first record and the second record, on a field-by-field basis, and replaces the field of the second record with a vertical repeat indicator if the field of the second record matches the corresponding field of the first record. A horizontal compression technique further compresses the second record by replacing adjacent matching characters with a horizontal repeat indicator.
Claims15
A method performed on a computer for compressing a plurality of records, each record comprising a plurality of delimited fields, each field comprising at least one character, the method comprising:
- comparing, on a field-by-field basis, a first record to a second record;
- replacing each field of the second record with a vertical repeat indicator if the field of the second record matches the corresponding field of the first record;
- and
- replacing adjacent matching characters in the second record with a horizontal repeat indicator.
A data processing system for compressing a plurality of records, each record comprising a plurality of delimited fields, each field comprising at least one character, the data processing system comprising:
- a first buffer operable to store a first record;
- a second buffer operable to store a second record;
- and
- a processor coupled to the first buffer and the second buffer, the processor operable to compare, on a field-by-field basis, the first record to the second record, the processor operable to replace each field of the second record with a vertical repeat indicator if the field of the second record matches the corresponding field of the first record, the processor further operable to replace adjacent matching characters in the second record with a horizontal repeat indicator.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.