Patent ID: 7098822

Claim:
A method for handling data comprising a number of data objects, said method comprising: for at least one of these data objects, determining whether a compression is conducted based on a predetermined value representing a compression factor of said data object; dynamically adjusting a threshold based on system needs, wherein the threshold is lowered for a system where the bandwidth is a greater concern than processing power and the threshold is increased for a system in which the processing power is a greater concern than bandwidth; comparing the value with a threshold value, wherein said threshold value is empirically determined via said dynamically adjusting step; performing a compression on said data object when the predetermined value does not exceed the threshold value; wherein the data is to be stored into a data repository, the method further comprising the steps of: receiving a data stream comprising the number of data objects; for each data object, deciding whether a compression is to be conducted based on the assigned value stored in the repository representing the compression factor of the respective data object; compressing the data that is identified as having an acceptable compression factor; determining the actual compression factor utilized to compress the data; storing compressed data objects having an acceptable compression factor and data objects having an unacceptable compression factor without compression into the data repository; and storing actual compression factors determined from the compression of the data into the repository.