Implementing in-memory compression for objects in Java

Question

We have this use case where we would like to compress and store objects (in-memory) and decompress them as and when required.

The data we want to compress is quite

Answer 1

There are various compression algorithm implemented in the JDK. Check the [java.util.zip](http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/zip/package-summary.html) for all algorithm implemented. However it may not be a good thing to compress all your data. For instance a serialized empty array may be several dozen of bytes long as the name of the underlying class is in the serialized data stream. Also most compression algorithm are designed to remove redundancy from large data blocks. On small to medium Java objects you'll probably have very little or no gain at all.