Patent ID: 8572054

Claim:
A data compression apparatus comprising: a compression unit, executed by a processor, which generates compressed data by applying a compression algorithm to data to be compressed; and a compressed file generating unit, executed by the processor, which generates a compressed file comprising the compressed data, a header including information on the compressed data, and an extension field, wherein the extension field includes one or more extension field units and an extension field terminating code indicating an end of a region capable of including the one or more extension field units, each of the header and the one or more extension field units starts with a data identification code having the same number of bytes, and an extension field unit of the one or more extension field units further includes its own length data separated by a predetermined number of bytes from its own data identification code, and wherein the header is divided into multiple headers according to first included information, and the extension field is divided into multiple extension fields according to second included information, and wherein the compressed file has a configuration in which the multiple headers, the multiple extension fields, and the compressed data are located by predefined sequence for supporting minimum decompression regardless of a version of compressed file format.