Patent attributes
Techniques are described herein for automatically selecting the compression techniques to be used on tabular data. A compression analyzer gives users high-level control over the selection process without requiring the user to know details about the specific compression techniques that are available to the compression analyzer. Users are able to specify, for a given set of data, a “balance point” along the spectrum between “maximum performance” and “maximum compression”. The point thus selected is used by the compression analyzer in a variety of ways. For example, in one embodiment, the compression analyzer uses the user-specified balance point to determine which of the available compression techniques qualify as “candidate techniques” for the given set of data. The compression analyzer selects the compression technique to use on a set of data by actually testing the candidate compression techniques against samples from the set of data. After testing the candidate compression techniques against the samples, the resulting compression ratios are compared. The compression technique to use on the set of data is then selected based, in part, on the compression ratios achieved during the compression tests performed on the sample data.
