Using IIS Compression to Speed Up XML Delivery

With the advent of Internet Explorer 5 came the powerful XMLHTTP object, an invaluable tool for building rich client applications. However, these applications often require the transfer of large XML documents between the client and server, which can cause problems. There are compression libraries available that can be used to compress your data before sending it to the client, but most of these come with a price tag. Fortunately, IIS 5.0 for Windows 2000 Server includes built--in compression for both static and dynamic files. This article, by Damian Shelley, shows you how to selectively enable compression and use it with the XMLHTTP object to compress XML documents.