Editing Binary delta compression

{{Short description|Technology used in software deployment}}
'''Binary delta compression''' is a technology used in [[software deployment]] for distributing [[patch (software)|patch]]es.

== Explanation ==
Downloading large amounts of data over the Internet for software updates can induce high network traffic problems, especially when a network of computers is involved. ''Binary Delta Compression'' technology allows a major reduction of download size by only transferring the difference between the old and the new files during the update process.

== Implementation ==
In real-world implementations, it is common to also use standard compression techniques (such as [[LZW|Lempel-Ziv]]) while compressing. This makes sense because LZW already works by referring back to re-used strings. [https://web.archive.org/web/20060426221704/http://cis.poly.edu/zdelta/ ZDelta] is a good example of this, as it is built from [[Zlib|ZLib]]. The algorithm works by referring to common patterns not only in the file to be compressed, but also in a source file. The benefits of this are that even if there are few similarities between the original and the new file, a good [[data compression ratio]] is attained.

== See also ==
* [[Delta encoding]]
* [[Remote Differential Compression]]

==External links==
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20040829073928/http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4789196c-d60a-497c-ae89-101a3754bad6&DisplayLang=en White paper for Microsoft's implementation of BDC technology]
*[https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/software-updates-courgette/ Courgette, a compression algorithm designed at Google to reduce the size of Google Chrome updates]

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[[Category:Software distribution]]