Comparison of alternatives for the representation of data items values in an information system

This paper presents an analytic comparison of various techniques available for the representation of data within an information system. In selecting among alternatives, our design objective is to minimize the average space required by a data record. This will, in turn, minimize the average amount of data transported between secondary storage and main memory by the users of the information system and will tend to minimize the running time of the average retrieval program (Benner, 1967; Kennedy, 1973; and Severance, 1972).