Patent ID: 8751671

Claim:
A format server for providing bitmask compression instructions, wherein the format server is operable to: communicate with a sender machine and a receiver machine; analyze a bitmask associated with a message to be sent from the sender machine to the receiver machine, wherein the bitmask comprises one or more presence bits and one or more absence bits, wherein the presence bits indicate that an associated field of the message are included in the message and the absence bits indicate that an associated field of the message are omitted in the message; dynamically determine compression instructions to compress the bitmask, wherein the compression instructions comprise: generating a tree using the presence bits and the absence bits; and generating the compressed bitmask by traversing the tree comprising the presence bits and the absence bits; and provide the compression instructions to the sender machine, wherein the compression instructions reduce size of the bitmask associated with the message to be sent to the receiver machine.