A system and methods are provided for reducing the size of a message sent
from a first computing device to a second computing device. The type of a
data value of a message may be altered for transmission; the second
computer recognizes a special data type assigned to the data value and
restores the original data type. Also, data values may be buffered, and
identifiers (e.g., buffer indexes) sent in their place. Both devices
maintain similar buffers and the second device uses the identifier to
retrieve the data value. Further, the contents of a new message may be
described by how they differ from the contents of a previous message. A
delta message is generated to describe the differences and identify the
previous message. Upon receipt of the delta message, the second computer
retrieves the previous message and uses it and the delta message to
reconstruct the new message.
