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-<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN">
-<html>
- <head>
- <title>Compression</title>
- </head>
-
- <body>
- <h1>Compression</h1>
-
- <h2>1. Introduction</h2>
-
- <p>HDF5 supports compression of raw data by compression methods
- built into the library or defined by an application. A
- compression method is associated with a dataset when the dataset
- is created and is applied independently to each storage chunk of
- the dataset.
-
- The dataset must use the <code>H5D_CHUNKED</code> storage
- layout. The library doesn't support compression for contiguous
- datasets because of the difficulty of implementing random access
- for partial I/O, and compact dataset compression is not
- supported because it wouldn't produce significant results.
-
- <h2>2. Supported Compression Methods</h2>
-
- <p>The library identifies compression methods with small
- integers, with values less than 16 reserved for use by NCSA and
- values between 16 and 255 (inclusive) available for general
- use. This range may be extended in the future if it proves to
- be too small.
-
- <p>
- <center>
- <table align=center width="80%">
- <tr>
- <th width="30%">Method Name</th>
- <th width="70%">Description</th>
- </tr>
-
- <tr valign=top>
- <td><code>H5Z_NONE</code></td>
- <td>The default is to not use compression. Specifying
- <code>H5Z_NONE</code> as the compression method results
- in better perfomance than writing a function that just
- copies data because the library's I/O pipeline
- recognizes this method and is able to short circuit
- parts of the pipeline.</td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr valign=top>
- <td><code>H5Z_DEFLATE</code></td>
- <td>The <em>deflate</em> method is the algorithm used by
- the GNU <code>gzip</code>program. It's a combination of
- a Huffman encoding followed by a 1977 Lempel-Ziv (LZ77)
- dictionary encoding. The aggressiveness of the
- compression can be controlled by passing an integer value
- to the compressor with <code>H5Pset_deflate()</code>
- (see below). In order for this compression method to be
- used, the HDF5 library must be configured and compiled
- in the presence of the GNU zlib version 1.1.2 or
- later.</td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr valign=top>
- <td><code>H5Z_RES_<em>N</em></code></td>
- <td>These compression methods (where <em>N</em> is in the
- range two through 15, inclusive) are reserved by NCSA
- for future use.</td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr valign=top>
- <td>Values of <em>N</em> between 16 and 255, inclusive</td>
- <td>These values can be used to represent application-defined
- compression methods. We recommend that methods under
- testing should be in the high range and when a method is
- about to be published it should be given a number near
- the low end of the range (or even below 16). Publishing
- the compression method and its numeric ID will make a
- file sharable.</td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- </center>
-
- <p>Setting the compression for a dataset to a method which was
- not compiled into the library and/or not registered by the
- application is allowed, but writing to such a dataset will
- silently <em>not</em> compress the data. Reading a compressed
- dataset for a method which is not available will result in
- errors (specifically, <code>H5Dread()</code> will return a
- negative value). The errors will be displayed in the
- compression statistics if the library was compiled with
- debugging turned on for the &quot;z&quot; package. See the
- section on diagnostics below for more details.
-
- <h2>3. Application-Defined Methods</h2>
-
- <p>Compression methods 16 through 255 can be defined by an
- application. As mentioned above, methods that have not been
- released should use high numbers in that range while methods
- that have been published will be assigned an official number in
- the low region of the range (possibly less than 16). Users
- should be aware that using unpublished compression methods
- results in unsharable files.
-
- <p>A compression method has two halves: one have handles
- compression and the other half handles uncompression. The
- halves are implemented as functions
- <code><em>method</em>_c</code> and
- <code><em>method</em>_u</code> respectively. One should not use
- the names <code>compress</code> or <code>uncompress</code> since
- they are likely to conflict with other compression libraries
- (like the GNU zlib).
-
- <p>Both the <code><em>method</em>_c</code> and
- <code><em>method</em>_u</code> functions take the same arguments
- and return the same values. They are defined with the type:
-
- <dl>
- <dt><code>typedef size_t (*H5Z_func_t)(unsigned int
- <em>flags</em>, size_t <em>cd_size</em>, const void
- *<em>client_data</em>, size_t <em>src_nbytes</em>, const
- void *<em>src</em>, size_t <em>dst_nbytes</em>, void
- *<em>dst</em>/*out*/)</code>
- <dd>The <em>flags</em> are an 8-bit vector which is stored in
- the file and which is defined when the compression method is
- defined. The <em>client_data</em> is a pointer to
- <em>cd_size</em> bytes of configuration data which is also
- stored in the file. The function compresses or uncompresses
- <em>src_nbytes</em> from the source buffer <em>src</em> into
- at most <em>dst_nbytes</em> of the result buffer <em>dst</em>.
- The function returns the number of bytes written to the result
- buffer or zero if an error occurs. But if a result buffer
- overrun occurs the function should return a value at least as
- large as <em>dst_size</em> (the uncompressor will see an
- overrun only for corrupt data).
- </dl>
-
- <p>The application associates the pair of functions with a name
- and a method number by calling <code>H5Zregister()</code>. This
- function can also be used to remove a compression method from
- the library by supplying null pointers for the functions.
-
- <dl>
- <dt><code>herr_t H5Zregister (H5Z_method_t <em>method</em>,
- const char *<em>name</em>, H5Z_func_t <em>method_c</em>,
- H5Z_func_t <em>method_u</em>)</code>
- <dd>The pair of functions to be used for compression
- (<em>method_c</em>) and uncompression (<em>method_u</em>) are
- associated with a short <em>name</em> used for debugging and a
- <em>method</em> number in the range 16 through 255. This
- function can be called as often as desired for a particular
- compression method with each call replacing the information
- stored by the previous call. Sometimes it's convenient to
- supply only one half of the compression, for instance in an
- application that opens files for read-only. Compression
- statistics for the method are accumulated across calls to this
- function.
- </dl>
-
- <p>
- <center>
- <table border align=center width="100%">
- <caption align=bottom><h4>Example: Registering an
- Application-Defined Compression Method</h4></caption>
- <tr>
- <td>
- <p>Here's a simple-minded &quot;compression&quot; method
- that just copies the input value to the output. It's
- similar to the <code>H5Z_NONE</code> method but
- slower. Compression and uncompression are performed
- by the same function.
-
- <p><code><pre>
-size_t
-bogus (unsigned int flags,
- size_t cd_size, const void *client_data,
- size_t src_nbytes, const void *src,
- size_t dst_nbytes, void *dst/*out*/)
-{
- memcpy (dst, src, src_nbytes);
- return src_nbytes;
-}
- </pre></code>
-
- <p>The function could be registered as method 250 as
- follows:
-
- <p><code><pre>
-#define H5Z_BOGUS 250
-H5Zregister (H5Z_BOGUS, "bogus", bogus, bogus);
- </pre></code>
-
- <p>The function can be unregistered by saying:
-
- <p><code><pre>
-H5Zregister (H5Z_BUGUS, "bogus", NULL, NULL);
- </pre></code>
-
- <p>Notice that we kept the name &quot;bogus&quot; even
- though we unregistered the functions that perform the
- compression and uncompression. This makes compression
- statistics more understandable when they're printed.
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- </center>
-
- <h2>4. Enabling Compression for a Dataset</h2>
-
- <p>If a dataset is to be compressed then the compression
- information must be specified when the dataset is created since
- once a dataset is created compression parameters cannot be
- adjusted. The compression is specified through the dataset
- creation property list (see <code>H5Pcreate()</code>).
-
- <dl>
- <dt><code>herr_t H5Pset_deflate (hid_t <em>plist</em>, int
- <em>level</em>)</code>
- <dd>The compression method for dataset creation property list
- <em>plist</em> is set to <code>H5Z_DEFLATE</code> and the
- aggression level is set to <em>level</em>. The <em>level</em>
- must be a value between one and nine, inclusive, where one
- indicates no (but fast) compression and nine is aggressive
- compression.
-
- <br><br>
- <dt><code>int H5Pget_deflate (hid_t <em>plist</em>)</code>
- <dd>If dataset creation property list <em>plist</em> is set to
- use <code>H5Z_DEFLATE</code> compression then this function
- will return the aggression level, an integer between one and
- nine inclusive. If <em>plist</em> isn't a valid dataset
- creation property list or it isn't set to use the deflate
- method then a negative value is returned.
-
- <br><br>
- <dt><code>herr_t H5Pset_compression (hid_t <em>plist</em>,
- H5Z_method_t <em>method</em>, unsigned int <em>flags</em>,
- size_t <em>cd_size</em>, const void *<em>client_data</em>)</code>
- <dd>This is a catch-all function for defining compresion methods
- and is intended to be called from a wrapper such as
- <code>H5Pset_deflate()</code>. The dataset creation property
- list <em>plist</em> is adjusted to use the specified
- compression method. The <em>flags</em> is an 8-bit vector
- which is stored in the file as part of the compression message
- and passed to the compress and uncompress functions. The
- <em>client_data</em> is a byte array of length
- <em>cd_size</em> which is copied to the file and passed to the
- compress and uncompress methods.
-
- <br><br>
- <dt><code>H5Z_method_t H5Pget_compression (hid_t <em>plist</em>,
- unsigned int *<em>flags</em>, size_t *<em>cd_size</em>, void
- *<em>client_data</em>)</code>
- <dd>This is a catch-all function for querying the compression
- method associated with dataset creation property list
- <em>plist</em> and is intended to be called from a wrapper
- function such as <code>H5Pget_deflate()</code>. The
- compression method (or a negative value on error) is returned
- by value, and compression flags and client data is returned by
- argument. The application should allocate the
- <em>client_data</em> and pass its size as the
- <em>cd_size</em>. On return, <em>cd_size</em> will contain
- the actual size of the client data. If <em>client_data</em>
- is not large enough to hold the entire client data then
- <em>cd_size</em> bytes are copied into <em>client_data</em>
- and <em>cd_size</em> is set to the total size of the client
- data, a value larger than the original.
- </dl>
-
- <p>It is possible to set the compression to a method which hasn't
- been defined with <code>H5Zregister()</code> and which isn't
- supported as a predefined method (for instance, setting the
- method to <code>H5Z_DEFLATE</code> when the GNU zlib isn't
- available). If that happens then data will be written to the
- file in its uncompressed form and the compression statistics
- will show failures for the compression.
-
- <p>
- <center>
- <table border align=center width="100%">
- <caption align=bottom><h4>Example: Statistics for an
- Unsupported Compression Method</h4></caption>
- <tr>
- <td>
- <p>If an application attempts to use an unsupported
- method then the compression statistics will show large
- numbers of compression errors and no data
- uncompressed.
-
- <p><code><pre>
-H5Z: compression statistics accumulated over life of library:
- Method Total Overrun Errors User System Elapsed Bandwidth
- ------ ----- ------- ------ ---- ------ ------- ---------
- deflate-c 160000 0 160000 0.00 0.01 0.01 1.884e+07
- deflate-u 0 0 0 0.00 0.00 0.00 NaN
- </pre></code>
-
- <p>This example is from a program that tried to use
- <code>H5Z_DEFLATE</code> on a system that didn't have
- the GNU zlib to write to a dataset and then read the
- result. The read and write both succeeded but the
- data was not compressed.
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- </center>
-
- <h2>5. Compression Diagnostics</h2>
-
- <p>If the library is compiled with debugging turned on for the H5Z
- layer (usually as a result of <code>configure --enable-debug=z</code>)
- then statistics about data compression are printed when the
- application exits normally or the library is closed. The
- statistics are written to the standard error stream and include
- two lines for each compression method that was used: the first
- line shows compression statistics while the second shows
- uncompression statistics. The following fields are displayed:
-
- <p>
- <center>
- <table align=center width="80%">
- <tr>
- <th width="30%">Field Name</th>
- <th width="70%">Description</th>
- </tr>
-
- <tr valign=top>
- <td>Method</td>
- <td>This is the name of the method as defined with
- <code>H5Zregister()</code> with the letters
- &quot;-c&quot; or &quot;-u&quot; appended to indicate
- compression or uncompression.</td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr valign=top>
- <td>Total</td>
- <td>The total number of bytes compressed or decompressed
- including buffer overruns and errors. Bytes of
- non-compressed data are counted.</td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr valign=top>
- <td>Overrun</td>
- <td>During compression, if the algorithm causes the result
- to be at least as large as the input then a buffer
- overrun error occurs. This field shows the total number
- of bytes from the Total column which can be attributed to
- overruns. Overruns for decompression can only happen if
- the data has been corrupted in some way and will result
- in failure of <code>H5Dread()</code>.</td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr valign=top>
- <td>Errors</td>
- <td>If an error occurs during compression the data is
- stored in it's uncompressed form; and an error during
- uncompression causes <code>H5Dread()</code> to return
- failure. This field shows the number of bytes of the
- Total column which can be attributed to errors.</td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr valign=top>
- <td>User, System, Elapsed</td>
- <td>These are the amount of user time, system time, and
- elapsed time in seconds spent by the library to perform
- compression. Elapsed time is sensitive to system
- load. These times may be zero on operating systems that
- don't support the required operations.</td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr valign=top>
- <td>Bandwidth</td>
- <td>This is the compression bandwidth which is the total
- number of bytes divided by elapsed time. Since elapsed
- time is subject to system load the bandwidth numbers
- cannot always be trusted. Furthermore, the bandwidth
- includes overrun and error bytes which may significanly
- taint the value.</td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- </center>
-
- <p>
- <center>
- <table border align=center width="100%">
- <caption align=bottom><h4>Example: Compression
- Statistics</h4></caption>
- <tr>
- <td>
- <p><code><pre>
-H5Z: compression statistics accumulated over life of library:
- Method Total Overrun Errors User System Elapsed Bandwidth
- ------ ----- ------- ------ ---- ------ ------- ---------
- deflate-c 160000 200 0 0.62 0.74 1.33 1.204e+05
- deflate-u 120000 0 0 0.11 0.00 0.12 9.885e+05
- </pre></code>
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- </center>
-
- <hr>
- <address><a href="mailto:matzke@llnl.gov">Robb Matzke</a></address>
-<!-- Created: Fri Apr 17 13:39:35 EDT 1998 -->
-<!-- hhmts start -->
-Last modified: Fri Apr 17 16:15:21 EDT 1998
-<!-- hhmts end -->
- </body>
-</html>