CoTe: A Software Tool for Compression Benchmarking

The tool, CoTe (compression tester), is a stand-alone program aiding in preparation of the tests (that is, choosing a set of test programs, files and their locations, and setting run-time options), running the tests (executing the programs with appropriate command- line switches, measuring processing time and output file size, removing unnecessary files after the tests are finished), and maintaining the results (viewing them, exporting to portable format). CoTe comes with an embedded database of the most popular compression programs which contains command-line syntax, used compression methods, modes and additional parameters, thus making it possible to test the programs without reading their documentation first. There is also included a much smaller database of the most popular test files. In both cases the items are categorized in taxonomical groups (encompassing compression method families and file types, respectively) which can help in drawing generalized conclusions from the test results (e.g., pertaining to a family of compression methods). Of course, each database can be modified and extended from within CoTe.