why do we need to compress the data?

Question

is compression only to reduce the size of the data?

Answer 1

Compressing data is not only used to reduce the size (which by the way can reduce the time it takes to send it somewhere) it is also the first step in many encryption systems. The most common way to attack encryption systems is to attack the fact that things like the human language has a lot of things that repeat. So get that out first and then encrypt.

Also to the question about why not compress by default. The reason is because data usually comes in some natural form like say letters of a language. As such that is the easiest for what is generating it or using it, so it takes extra effort to compress it and then uncompress it, which may or may not be worth it for any give situation. For instance lets say that I give you a hard drive that can store more information then you can ever use and it can retrieve that information instantly, why would you want to compress anything on it? What would the benefit be?

Answer 2

Some people compress data because they need to send a rather large file or a series of files to someone. So they compress the file with the program of their chosing.

makes it easy to keep related files together and makes transporting faster.

On the other hand some people may have a small hard drive and they compress the data to conserve disk space. Although I think this is another question all together and I'm going off topic.

Generally its used to combine files to make attachments smaller when emailed or sent via messenger, p2p etc etc.

Answer 3

Data compression is useful in reducing the storage and/or transmission bandwidth equirements of medical images.

In the medical image scenario, lossy compression chemes are not generally used. This is due to a possible loss of useful clinical information which may influence diagnosis. Hence there is a need for efficient lossless compression schemes for medical data.

Answer 4

Although JPEGS and gifs do not see any gains from compression, there is alot of other types of data that do. Whether it is normal html code (standerd webpage), text files, XML, SOAP, SQL queries (different types of text data), audio, or graphical. Compression removes alot of the noise.. ie in audio, compression algorithems remove frequencies that cannot be heard by humans... in so doing, they decrease the size of the file, which in turn, gains all the advantages of being smaller.

Answer 5

Its smaller to use and faster to transfer. And a great use is if u hav more then one file to transfer at atime its not possible while its not compressed. Its only possible with compressing all the files in to a compressed folder. Its the main use of the compressing.

Answer 6

I've always wondered, if we can compress the data, why isn't it just compressed to begin with??????

If you Zip a jpeg, you've gained nothing, because the file is already compressed... so why are so many files of other types NOT compressed?

Answer 7

yes compression is reduce the size of data. if u compress songs then its reduce its quality

Answer 8

Many benefits
1- smaller the data easier to transfer.
2- Like if u wanna transfer some file throw mail you have to attach it separately but if you will compress the whole folder it will go as one file so its easier, you can understad what I mean.

Answer 9

We use to compress the data so that it can be stored using less memory.By compression,the unnecessary portions & gapes are removed to save memory.

Answer 10

Yeah, smaller the data file, faster to move. More efficient process.