> Due to a huge amount of data records I plan to download into a pilot DB
> I'm seeking for the best approach of storing my data efficiently (verry
> efficiently...)
>
> My records now do have many fields such like
> Char Descr [255]
> Char Msg [30]
> Char Name [55]
> and so on
As you've observed, the first is to discard unused space by storing all
strings as zero delimited or pascal strings (length byte first) and packing
them together. The second is to compress each string itself. You could use
something like Huffman encoding (see any book on data compression) but this
may not be fast enough if you want to sort/search the records.
I developed compression/decompression algorithms for a number of my products
(ZipCode+ etc) which use a modestly sized static dictionary and byte
alignment and I get good compression and speed. If you're interested in
licensing some custom routines based on this, please reply by e-mail. As
always, the more you know about the characteristics of your data, the better
compression ratio you'll achieve.
Stephen Best
Bitware Australia
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