SBIR Phase I: Next Generation Intelligence-Based Extensible Markup Language (XML) Compression Technology

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I research project will research and develop a next-generation enabling technology for networks and collaboration by significantly enhancing the compression of Internet data sources and Web Services. Current compression technologies are rarely integrated into the technology stacks of collaborative technologies because their compression performance does not add significantly to the overall performance of the system, especially for relatively small and sparse data like HTML and XML. In this project the research team plans to enhance its current XML compression technology, which can result in greater than 500% better compression ratios than standard methods on small Web Services documents, to operate over the broader range of unstructured and semi-structured Internet and intranet data types, including HTML and email. The firm will also research exploiting longer-range redundancies inherent in these data types based on novel compression methods to improve on their technology's existing XML performance characteristics. Finally, they will assess the technological and economic impacts of pervasive compression on the Internet ecosystem. The broader impacts of this technology include basic scientific improvements on known methods for compressing text and data, and improving the understanding of intelligent compression technologies and how to apply them to common Internet and intranet technology stacks. The technological approach is uniquely capable of supporting routing, mining and filtering of Web data and email based on content while in compressed form. Significant adoption of high-performance compression technology has dramatic economic implications for modern business, academic and scientific organizations in terms of the size, cost and nature of their information technology infrastructure. The amount of semi-structured data is anticipated to continue to grow dramatically and the economic impact of improving resource utilization for transmission, routing and storage of that data will grow dramatically as well.