Unlike data compression, Efficient XML makes XML data both smaller and faster to process. It also achieves better compactness than data compression and works well for a broader range of XML messages. It can actually make XML documents hundreds of times smaller and faster by using knowledge about the XML and the data contained in the document itself, producing a more streamlined, efficient version of that document.

Efficient XML Performance

Efficient XML provides more efficient representations for a broader range of XML documents than any XML format available and allows users to tune performance according to application specific criteria (e.g., speed over size). The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) conducted extensive benchmarking of binary XML technologies and found Efficient XML consistently achieved the best compression for every test group, every use case and every class of application. At the same time, they found that AgileDelta's Efficient XML was one of the fastest binary XML implementations of any kind. And unlike other formats, Efficient XML is able to represent every XML document, not just schema-valid documents or a specific subset of XML. In the best real-world cases reported by customers, Efficient XML was over 450 times smaller than standard XML and 42 times smaller than WinZip.

The graphs above to the right and below to the left show how many times smaller and faster Efficient XML makes a set of large, real-world SOAP web-service messages compared side-by-side with XML, GZIP and Fast Infoset. Taller bars represent smaller messages and faster processing (click on the graphs for larger images). So in these cases, Efficient XML is up to 122 times smaller than XML, 14 times smaller than gzip and 23 times smaller than Fast Infoset. At the same time, Efficient XML processes these messages up to 35 times faster than XML, 36 times faster than GZIP and 5 times faster than Fast Infoset. Efficient XML is the only technology of any kind that achieves this level of bandwidth and processing efficiency. And if processing speed is your primary goal, Efficient XML can operate at over twice these speeds when optimized for speed over size.

As you can see, Efficient XML is dramatically smaller and faster than XML. Processing Efficient XML requires significantly less time, processing power and battery power than processing XML. In addition, applications can read and write Efficient XML directly using popular XML APIs instead of serializing, compressing, decompressing, and parsing XML.

Of course, transmitting Efficient XML over wireless networks also requires significantly less bandwidth, radio time, CPU cycles and battery power. By reducing all these things simultaneously, Efficient XML dramatically accelerates XML applications and allows any information to be accessed and processed by virtually any device, anywhere.

Efficient XML also works for any size messages, including very small messages typical of web services, mobile devices, financial data, and location-based services. Traditional data compression techniques have very little effect on these types of messages and can actually increase their size while reducing processing speeds. Efficient XML makes them both smaller and faster.

The graphs above show how many times faster and smaller Efficient XML makes small XML documents used for various geo-location applications compared side-by-side with XML, Fast Infoset and GZIP. In these cases, Efficient XML is up to 121 times smaller than XML, 42 times smaller than GZIP and 64 times smaller than Fast Infoset. At the same time, Efficient XML processing speeds are up to 50 times faster than XML, 60 times faster than GZIP and 3 times faster than Fast Infoset.

To find out how much faster and smaller Efficient XML makes your data, download a 30-day evaluation copy or contact AgileDelta Sales purchase a copy today. After you download Efficient XML, try efxperf, an easy-to-use benchmarking tool that quickly shows exactly how much faster and smaller Efficient XML makes your data.

An Industry Standard

The Efficient XML data format has been selected by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as the basis for Efficient XML Interchange (EXI), the emerging web standard for binary XML. AgileDelta is actively working within the W3C to finalize the global standard for Efficient XML Interchange. Read our W3C proposal to learn more about the benefits, requirements and underlying theories of Efficient XML.

Efficiency is the Opportunity

Small, mobile and embedded devices do not have resources to spare. They are constrained by battery life, size, weight, heat, processing power, memory and network bandwidth. The cost of adding additional resources to handle more functionality often prices mass market devices such as mobile handsets, consumer electronics, game consoles, and automobile navigation systems out of cost-sensitive markets.

Efficient XML creates opportunities for adding more compelling content and applications on existing devices without additional resources. It creates opportunities to reduce the cost of new devices by enabling them to function with fewer resources. It creates opportunities for content providers and application developers to reach far more customers. And it creates opportunities for network operators to increase utilization of their data networks.

Key Efficient XML Features

Schema optimization: Efficient XML includes the most flexible and effective set of schema optimizations available. Users may specify strict, open or extensible schema handling and may provide a full schema, partial schema or no schema at all. Efficient XML leverages available schema information to improve compactness and performance, but does not depend on the accuracy or completeness of the schema to successfully encode the data. This flexible processing model is very useful for managing interoperability between systems fielded on different schedules and enabling systems to evolve independently at their own pace.

Document optimizations: Efficient XML includes advanced document optimizations that leverage knowledge of XML and patterns detected in a document to reduce file size. Efficient XML’s document optimizations are configurable and allow users to balance speed, compactness, resource utilization and streaming characteristics to meet application objectives. Document optimizations can be used independently or combined with schema optimizations.

Widely used, standard APIs: Efficient XML can be used as a stand-alone compression utility or integrated directly into host applications. Host applications can read and write Efficient XML streams directly to avoid the cost of translating to and from XML. Efficient XML supports standard XML APIs to simplify and accelerate integration. For example, applications can generate Efficient XML streams directly from standard W3C DOM trees, SAX event streams, StAX event streams or XML character streams. Likewise, applications can parse Efficient XML streams directly into standard W3C DOM trees, SAX event streams, StAX event streams or XML character streams.

Parsing Optimizations: Applications can parse and serialize Efficient XML faster than XML. Incorporating Efficient XML into an existing application will automatically accelerate the application. And because Efficient XML supports standard XML APIs, this acceleration can usually be achieved with little to no changes to the application code.

Fidelity optimizations: Efficient XML allows applications to preserve or discard white space, comments and other XML artifacts that may not be needed by an application. Discarding these items will improve compactness while maintaining the logical structure and content of the XML document.

Query results and document fragments: In addition to representing XML documents, Efficient XML can efficiently represent any list of elements extracted from an XML document. This enables applications to efficiently send portions of an XML document when sending the whole document is not practical or possible. For example, Efficient XML can represent a query result, document fragment or a set of recent changes to a document. If schema optimizations are enabled, Efficient XML will deduce a schema to efficiently represent the extracted information.

Extensible encoding rules: The set of Efficient XML encoding rules can be customized, extended or replaced by third parties to meet application specific objectives. As such, Efficient XML can be customized to process existing binary formats, such as VMF or TADIL, using standard schemas and custom encoding rules. This is useful for extending the reach of XML to existing systems when modifying those systems is too expensive or time consuming.

Small, mobile and embedded systems: Efficient XML is optimized for devices with extremely limited resources, including mass market mobile handsets. It can be deployed on a wide range of diverse platforms with limited memory, storage, processing power and battery life.

Streaming support: Efficient XML supports full streaming enabling applications to begin generating results before reading the entire document into memory. This is critical for scalable, responsive and mobile applications that cannot afford to allocate the memory required to hold the entire document or to wait for the entire document to be read before processing it.