Semantic data compression

Information services are considered to consist of operations on information objects, which are descriptions of entities, relationships, events, processes, concepts, etc. The operations act on particular representations of an information object. Such operations include the creation of an initial machine usable form R(s), transformations (reversible or not) between one representation R_i(s) and another R_j( s), the storage of an R(s), the transmission of an R(s) over some communication channel, and the use of an R(s) to guide some process. This thesis outlines a general model for the cost and performance of such operations. Space constraints limit this summary to presenting some general principles: R(s) should directly support the operations to be applied to s, stored and communicated R (s) should be independent of any restrictions arising from a particular device which uses it, and R(s) should also support efficient translations into device dependent forms