Survey of data compression techniques

PM-AIM must provide to customers in a timely fashion information about Army acquisitions. This paper discusses ways that PM-AIM can reduce the volume of data that must be transmitted between sites. Although this paper primarily discusses techniques of data compression, it also briefly discusses other options for meeting the PM-AIM requirements. The options available to PM-AIM, in addition to hardware and software data compression, include less-frequent updates, distribution of partial updates, distributed data base design, and intelligent network design. Any option that enhances the performance of the PM-AIM network is worthy of consideration. The recommendations of this paper apply to the PM-AIM project in three phases: the current phase, the target phase, and the objective phase. Each recommendation will be identified as (1) appropriate for the current phase, (2) considered for implementation during the target phase, or (3) a feature that should be part of the objective phase of PM-AIM`s design. The current phase includes only those measures that can be taken with the installed leased lines. The target phase includes those measures that can be taken in transferring the traffic from the leased lines to the DSNET environment with minimal changes in the current design. The objective phase includesmore » all the things that should be done as a matter of course. The objective phase for PM-AIM appears to be a distributed data base with data for each site stored locally and all sites having access to all data.« less