Binary formatted message standards have been designed by the military for use in bandwidth restricted environments such as between airborne platforms and ground based terminals. These standards are typically designed at the binary encoding level rather than through use of abstract modeling languages. At the same time DoD is widely adopting the use of XML for information exchange. As military messaging standards migrate to XML, concern exists in using XML for binary formatted messages. Such messages are orders of magnitude larger, and consequently the increase in bandwidth required to send those messages could exceed the capacity of current communication resources.

Some who are knowledgeable in XML have countered that use of compression technologies, and/or the use of binary XML message encoders and protocols could mitigate these risks. We present the findings of a study initiated to better understand the increase in bandwidth in using XML for dissemination of this binary originated information, and to determine what techniques might alleviate this concern. The goal of the study is to provide concrete data showing equivalent messages represented in the native binary format versus compressed XML representations. The study applies compression techniques to sample messages encoded in the native binary and in XML to determine their resulting sizes. The study also addresses the tradeoffs between abstract message design and application of physical encoding versus design at the physical level.