Patent ID: 8321326

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for enhancing the efficiency of digitally communicating a financial message from a first computer to a second computer, which method comprises the steps: (A) employing a data compression technique to establish a coding scheme and employing said coding scheme to produce a database that enables: (1) the formation of a coded version of an unencoded financial message based on order-units present in said unencoded financial message; wherein: (i) said data compression technique is customized so that said coding scheme allocates shorter codes to order-units having a higher p-value in said unencoded financial message and longer codes to order-units having a lower p-value present in said unencoded financial message; or (ii) said data compression technique is adaptive to permit said coding scheme to adjust over time to allocate shorter codes to order-units having a higher p-value in said unencoded financial message and longer codes to order-units having a lower p-value for order-units present in both said unencoded financial message and in at least one previously communicated financial message; wherein said p-value is a metric of the moving average of the frequency of said order-unit, weighted by its assigned importance, relative to other order-units in said message(s), such that an order-unit having a higher importance-weighted frequency is assigned a higher p-value than an order-unit having a lesser importance-weighted frequency; and (2) the decoding of the encoded version of said financial message; wherein the message length of said coded version of said financial message is shorter than the message length of said unencoded financial message; (B) providing said database to said first and second computers; and (C) digitally communicating said coded version of said financial message from said first computer to said second computer, directly or via one or more intermediate computers.