Prior to performing a Unicode conversion of a productive system and during an uptime processing stage of the productive system, files in the productive system are mapped to a cluster file system. Prior to the Unicode conversion and during an uptime processing stage of the productive system, a clone system of the productive system is generated using the cluster file system. Prior to the Unicode conversion and during an uptime processing stage of the productive system, the clone system is tested. During a downtime processing stage of the productive system, the Unicode conversion is performed. The clone system is activated, including making the clone system the productive system.

An encoder includes data processing hardware operable to: process input data into a plurality of blocks/packets; apply a plurality of transformations to content of the blocks/packets to generate corresponding transformed data; check a quality of representation of the transformed data prior to application of the transformations to determine whether or not the quality of representation of the transformed data satisfies quality criteria; if the quality of representation does not satisfy the quality criteria, to divide and/or combine the one or more individual blocks or packets further and repeating the transformation step; and if the quality of representation of the transformed data satisfies the one or more quality criteria, to select coding methods and encode data representative of the input data to be encoded to provide encoded output data; and communicate in the encoded data information describing the plurality of transformations or combinations of transformations employed when coding the blocks/packets.

Collating text strings having Unicode encoding includes receiving two text strings S=s.sub.1s.sub.2 . . . s and T=t.sub.1t.sub.2 . . . t.sub.m. When the two text strings are not identical, there is a smallest positive integer p for which the two text strings differ. The process looks up the characters s.sub.p and t.sub.p in a predefined lookup table. If either of these characters is missing from the lookup table, the collation of the text strings is determined using the standard Unicode comparison of the text strings s.sub.ps.sub.p+1 . . . s.sub.n and t.sub.pt.sub.p+1 . . . t.sub.m. Otherwise, the lookup table assigns weights v.sub.p and w.sub.p for the characters s.sub.p and t.sub.p. When v.sub.pw.sub.p, these weights define the collation order of the strings S and T. When v.sub.p=w.sub.p, the collation of S and T is determined recursively using the suffix strings s.sub.p+1 . . . s.sub.n and t.sub.p+1 . . . t.sub.m.

A pointer is set to a first code unit of an original string that encodes characters via code units within an encoding scheme. Whether the code unit of the original string referenced by the pointer is valid within the encoding scheme is determined. If the code unit referenced by the pointer is valid, one or more code units of the original string that encode a single character within the encoding scheme are processed, starting at the code unit referenced by the pointer. The one or more code units as have been processed are appended to a processed string. A single shadow unit indicating that the one or more code units that have been processed are valid is appended to a shadow array. The pointer is advanced to the code unit of the original string following the one or more code units.

Comparing text strings with Unicode encoding includes receiving two text strings S.sub.1 and S.sub.2. The process computes, for the first text string S.sub.1, a first weight according to a weight function that computes an ASCII prefix .sub.A(S.sub.1), computes a Unicode weight suffix .sub.U(S.sub.1), and concatenates the weights to form the first weight (S.sub.1)=.sub.A(S.sub.1)+.sub.U(S.sub.1). Computing the ASCII prefix for the first string applies bitwise operations to n-byte contiguous blocks of the first string to determine whether each block contains only ASCII characters, and replaces accented Unicode characters with equivalent unaccented ASCII characters when comparison is designated as accent-insensitive. When there is a first block containing a non-replaceable non-ASCII character, the Unicode weight suffix is computed by performing a character-by-character Unicode weight lookup beginning with the first block. The same process is applied to the second string. The text string are compared by comparing their computed weights.

Collating text strings having Unicode encoding includes receiving two text strings S=s.sub.1s.sub.2 . . . s.sub.n and T=t.sub.1t.sub.2 . . . t.sub.m. When the two text strings are not identical, there is a smallest positive integer p for which the two text strings differ. The process looks up the characters s.sub.p and t.sub.p in a predefined lookup table. If either of these characters is missing from the lookup table, the collation of the text strings is determined using the standard Unicode comparison of the text strings s.sub.ps.sub.p+1 . . . s.sub.n and t.sub.pt.sub.p+1 . . . t.sub.m. Otherwise, the lookup table assigns weights v.sub.p and w.sub.p for the characters s.sub.p and t.sub.p. When v.sub.pw.sub.p, these weights define the collation order of the strings S and T. When v.sub.p=w.sub.p, the collation of S and T is determined recursively using the suffix strings s.sub.p+1 . . . s.sub.n and t.sub.p+1 . . . t.sub.m.

A computer-implemented method according to one embodiment includes receiving a text document for storage within a storage device. The text document includes a plurality of words which are separated by spaces. Further, each word includes a last letter. The computer-implemented method also includes replacing the last letter of each word in the text document with a replacement symbol and removing the space after each word so as to reduce the file size of the text document to create a reduced file size text document. The computer-implemented method further includes storing the reduced file size text document within the storage device.

Provided is a process that includes: authenticating a user based on a sequence of transactions that specify a knowledge factor credential where the knowledge-factor credential is lower entropy than the sequence of user-entered transactions, such that possession of the fully entered knowledge-factor credential, without possession of the sequence of user-entered transactions, does not reveal all of the user-entered transactions by which the fully entered knowledge-factor credential was specified by the user.

A recording medium having stored therein an encoding program that causes a computer to execute a process, the process including first generating a plurality of word codes by assigning a compression code to each of a plurality of words contained in a sentence in a compression target document, second generating a plurality of pieces of semantic structure information respectively corresponding to the plurality of words by performing a semantic analysis of the sentence, third generating a plurality of semantic structure codes by assigning each of the plurality of compression codes to corresponding semantic structure information, and outputting the plurality of word codes and the plurality of semantic structure codes with a specific order.

Technology is disclosed herein for compressing, encoding, and otherwise reducing the size of resource files. In at least one implementation, similarity compression is employed to reduce the size of a resource file. In another implementation, map-less encoding is employed to reduce the number of bytes used to represent a resource string. Bit-level compression is employed in another implementation to reduce the quantity of bits used to encode each character in a string. In addition, implementations are disclosed related to technology for naming strings and accelerated string location and retrieval.