Compact in-memory representation of XML data: design and implementation of a compressed DOM for data-centric documents

Over recent years XML has evolved from a document exchange format to a multi-purpose data storage and retrieval solution. To make use of the full potential of XML in the domain of large, data-centric documents it is necessary to have easy and fast access to individual data elements. We describe an implementation of the Document Object Model (DOM) that is designed with these objectives in mind. It uses compression to allow large documents to be stored in the computer's main memory. Query-relevant DOM methods are optimised to work on top of the created data structure. Measurements indicate that compression up to a factor of 5 is possible without losing the ability to directly address individual elements. No prior decompression is needed to query and locate nodes.