Compression Comparison Guide

[peaz]

"For an eternity, the ZIP format has reigned supreme. However, all good things must make way for better things. Today, we will compare the ZIP format against 10 of its most promising competitors! Who will take the crown in data compression? Enter and find out!"

Please feel free to comment or discuss about this article.

[Felix187]

great job... i found the article to be quite informative. makes you wonder why we're all still using ZIP when it seems like SBC is the way to fly these days. or RAR, even.
also, i've got a request for the next revision: namely, a few different compressors to include.
personally, i'm interested in gzip, i wonder how it does. also, the Mac compression .hqx is of interest to me.
i'd appreciate it if you'd look at these compression schemes for an update.
thanx again for a great read!
-Felix

[Worf]

Funny - the 'big three' compression programs on UNIX were missing - compress (ick - anyone ever use these anymore?), GZip (the most ubiquous, often in the form of tarballs (.tar.gz or .tgz)), and bzip2 (again, with tarballs, .tar.bz2).

Now, all tend to require the use of tar with them, which is why GNU tar includes options to automatically compress with GZip (-z), compress (-Z), or bzip2 (-j or -I, depending on the version - go figure).

Would be nice to see if these "foreign" formats hold up - tar.gz in particular since WinZip can handle them natively (although, naively - it isn't the best at viewing them, but it does handle them).

(I use Linux/UN*X systems daily, so my Windows machines often have Win32 versions of these utilities installed so I can view them without winzip).

[peaz]

Hmm, i do agree that we should also include other formats from other platforms. However, all of us rojakpotters are windows based users, therefore, i think this is why Adrian did not included those formats in this guide.

However, if those formats can be used in the windows platform please do tell us!

I'm a non-unix user so i'm not very sure bout this.

Cheerz

[Adrian Wong]

Hello everyone!

I guess I should have mentioned it... but the guide was only meant to cover data compressors that work on Microsoft Windows, specifically Windows XP. That's why UNIX and Mac data compressors were not included in the guide. If I were to open up the field to include data compressors from other operating systems, it would be way too complex for me.

The reason I wrote the guide was to examine the performance of the various data compressors available for the Windows platform. This will allow many of our readers to directly compare the performance of the data compressors over a variety of datasets.

I never had the intention of testing formats that are only supported by other operating systems as, for most part, it would not mean much to the average Windows user.

But if any of those formats can be handled natively in Windows, I would love to test them out for the next revision. Like peaz, I'm not familiar with UNIX.

[eitje]

gzip executable (command line):
http://www.gzip.org/#exe

bzip2 executable (command line):
http://sources.redhat.com/bzip2/#bzip2-latest

in my own research (for some products my company produces), i've found gzip libs work faster than bzip2, but bzip2 libs are half again the size of what gzip and zip create.

also: interesting review. i'm not sure that the "compressor efficiency rating" really does you any good. as you said in the review, you can't always take what it's telling you @ face value... and that's usually a sign of a poor method of measurement....

finally: i was having connectivity issues with your site throughout the review. not so bad, all i had to do was hit refresh, right? well, sometimes, it'd kick me back to the front page and kill my back button history. so i'd have to jump directly to the place in the article where i'd just been, but THAT kicked me back to the frontpage as well. so i'd have to re-enter the article, then travel through all the pages i'd just read, because the dropdown to jump to where i'd just been kicked me back to the main page too. now we're talking pain in the ass. fyi. :)

congratulations on being back! hope you're able to stick around for a while! :)

[EDIT: on a windows platform, i'll tend to use UltimateZip (http://www.ultimatezip.com/) for all my archive DEcompression needs. it supports DEcompression in a ton of formats... and DEcompression spped of various utilities is something i'd like to see examined in the next revision as well! :)]

[Adrian Wong]

Hello eitje,

Thanks for the links. Will check them out.

Well, the Efficiency Rating was done out of curiosity. It's NOT a measurement. It's merely an arbitrary value created from the speed and the compression rating. What I meant by not taking it at face value is that a high efficiency rating does not mean the compressor is better.

Often, the compression performance of the data compressor is more important than the speed at which it compresses (within a reasonable limit). For some people, however, speed is more important. But the user will never choose a compressor based on its efficiency rating.

The efficiency ratings actually serves to prove a point - compression speed is also important. Most of the designers of such software placed too much emphasis on compression performance.

Of course, compression performance IMHO is very important but so is compression speed. I think some emphasis should be given towards compression speed. And I hope the efficiency rating will serve to remind designers of the newer data compressors that while they may get the oohs and the ahhs with their powerful compression algorithms, they cannot humble the old boys (ZIP and ARJ) when it comes to speed (and efficiency).

[peaz]

Originally Posted by eitje

well, sometimes, it'd kick me back to the front page and kill my back button history. so i'd have to jump directly to the place in the article where i'd just been, but THAT kicked me back to the frontpage as well. so i'd have to re-enter the article, then travel through all the pages i'd just read, because the dropdown to jump to where i'd just been kicked me back to the main page too. now we're talking pain in the ass. fyi.

Yeah, It's great to be back.

Anyway, I'm the one in charge of the back-end of the site. You mentioned that kicks you to the main page when you press the drop down jump menu? This doe snot seem to happen on my PC here. Anyway. I would like to know what version of IE or Netscape that you are using. Also, do you use any sort of Internet privacy blocking software? It is known that Norton's Internet Security that has the ability to block browsers from knowing the previously accessed site does not work very well with our site. Now, the reason is this. To prevent leeching, we have entered codes in our pages to check the previous accessed. If it's detected that those pages are not called by our own main pages, it loads up the main page. This seems to be happening in your case.

Please tell me more as I would like to know if anything else seems to be the problem.

Thanks for pointing this problem out. We know it's a pain in the @$$ but to prevent bandwidth leeching, we had no choice.

[eitje]

Originally Posted by peaz

You mentioned that kicks you to the main page when you press the drop down jump menu?

yep. following the links works fine, and now that i'm not getting 403.9s anymore, that's not as much of a hassle. on shorter articles. but when i use the dropdowns, two panes turn into "Action Cancelled" pages, then jump to the homepage.

Originally Posted by peaz

This doe snot seem to happen on my PC here.

ewwwww. doe snot. ;)

Originally Posted by peaz

I would like to know what version of IE or Netscape that you are using.

IE 5.00.3315.1000
SP2; Q323759

Originally Posted by peaz

Also, do you use any sort of Internet privacy blocking software?

we have a firewall running on our router, but no privacy software.

[peaz]

Originally Posted by eitje

ewwwww. doe snot.

Bare with me, I'm known to type lots of typos...

Hmm your problem seems a little weird. I couldn't in anyway simulate it here. Well, I'll continue to try to work on this.

Cheerz