This paper is going to explore the PKZIP algorithm drawing particular attention to the history, the drawing board and the purported attacks on this data compression algorithm that raised more questions than there are ready answers to those questions. My point here is, it may be an advantage to understand how things work and what our options are for data compression. While most of us will probably not invent the next Huffman Coding rule, most of us did not write the OS/400 operating system either.

In this context, I suspect data compression will be used more and more for all types of applications from storage to data transmission.

Increasingly large quantities of data are stored for mining, trend analysis and decision support purposes. With data mining technology, plain old data has suddenly become much more valuable. Demand for data compression on digital voice and data networks is exploding. While only a few of us will ever apply these techniques in our own code, this whole area is none-the-less a fascinating one to explore. Data compression is a murky science that does not get a lot of visibility in our every-day programming lives.

Microsoft office 2011 keygen download