Patent ID: 8723701

Claim:
A method for compressing data, wherein one or more types of compression are applied to one or more data blocks of a data packet containing financial data, with packet independent data compression being performed, at least in part, based on data residing within data fields in the one or more data blocks, the method comprising: analyzing at least one of any characteristic, attribute, or parameter of the data residing within the data fields in the one or more data blocks, wherein the analyzing of the data within the data fields excludes analyzing based on a descriptor that is indicative of the any characteristic, attribute, or parameter of the data residing within the data fields; selecting an encoder associated with the at least one of the characteristic, attribute, or parameter of the data field; compressing data in the data field utilizing the selected encoder; and associating a recognizable data token with the compressed data, the recognizable data token being capable of identifying the selected encoder; wherein the data packet comprises a header containing control information followed by the data fields of the data packet.