Liquid Fast Infoset for .Net

Overview

This page explains the benefits of using Liquid Fast Infoset for .Net.

Fast Infoset is an ITU-T (X.891) and ISO (IEC 24824-1) defined standard that specifies a binary encoding for W3C XML Information Set. Unlike other XML representations, the Fast Infoset standard has the dual benefits of both compression and performance, making it the ideal choice for moving large XML data between disparate low bandwidth systems or for high performance systems such as those utilizing Web services.

Ease of Use

Often there is a steep learning curve involved in utilizing new technologies. Liquid Fast Infoset for .Net has a flat curve for anyone who already uses the standard .Net XML classes.

The LiquidTechnologies.FIReader and LiquidTechnologies.FIWriter classes can be directly used in place of System.Xml.XmlTextReader and System.Xml.XmlTextWriter classes with no alterations to the surrounding code, see our sample code.

This means you can have your application up and running with the benefits of Fast Infoset support very quickly and with very little effort and risk.

Compression

If your .Net application needs to move XML data over a low bandwidth system or needs to store large amounts of XML data in a compressed format then Liquid Fast Infoset for .Net can provide the solution.

The following graph shows a typical compression ratio achievable for Fast infoset encoded XML documents over standard XML documents*:

As you can see from the graph, the Fast Infoset encoded data is compressed to around 12% of the original XML document size. Better still, reading and writing the compressed data is faster than reading and writing non-compressed XML data.

*Data compression shown is an average for the XML Mark 1.1 test documents.

Performance

If your .Net application is failing to perform XML transactions to its required service level, then Liquid Fast Infoset for .Net can provide the solution.

The following graph shows a the data manipulation ration achievable for Fast Infoset encoded XML documents and standard XML documents (see detailed results for individual test results)**:

As you can see from the graph, the Fast Infoset encoded data is manipulated on average 67% faster than that of standard XML data.

The detailed results breakdown below shows that Liquid Fast Infoset for .Net offers a peak perfromance gain of 156% (SAX 3 Test).

Detailed XML Mark 1.1 Test Results

The following graph and table show the detailed results for each of the XML Mark 1.1 test performed.** This gives a direct comparison of performance between FIReader and FIWriter and XmlTextReader and XmlTextWriter.

In every case, the Liquid Fast Infoset for .Net v1.0.2 classes outperform the Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0 classes.

**XML Mark 1.1 test were performed on a Sun Ultra 20 Workstation (1 x 2.2GHz AMD Opteron 148 Processor, 1GB RAM, NVIDIA nForce4 Serial ATA Controller, Seagate 80GB SATA 7200RPM HDD formatted as NTFS, Windows XP SP2).