fig1 shows by way of example an encoding and decoding system comprising an encoder enc and a decoder dec wherein xml documents doc are encoded and decoded respectively . both the encoder and the decoder have an xml schema s in which the elements and types of the xml document which are used for communication are declared and defined . code tables ct are generated in the encoder and decoder from the schema s via corresponding schema compilations sc . when the xml document doc is encoded , binary codes are assigned to the contents of the xml document via the code tables . accordingly , a binary representation bdoc of the document doc is generated , which binary representation can be decoded again in the decoder with the aid of the code table ct . the method according to the invention is characterized in that textual contents of a “ complex type ” data type with the “ mixed ” content model are assigned binary structure codes . this enables the textual data to be filtered out from the binary representation bdoc without the need to decode the entire binary representation bdoc . fig2 shows by way of example a schema s , an element with the name “ example ” being declared in this schema in lines 4 to 10 , said element in turn containing an element with the name “ mixedelement ” of the type “ mixedtype ”. the type “ mixedtype ” is defined in lines 12 to 17 , and is a “ complex type ” data type with the content model “ mixed ”, as can be derived in particular from line 12 . the type “ mixedtype ” contains two elements with the name “ firstelement ” and “ secondelement ”, both of which are of the “ string ” type . fig3 shows an instantiation of the element “ mixedelement ” in an xml document . since the “ mixed ” content model can include textual contents in the form of strings , textual contents can occur before , after or between the first and second elements “ firstelement ” and “ secondelement ”. a total of three textual contents occur in the example shown in fig3 . the structure of the element “ mixedelement ” which is instantiated in fig3 is shown again in fig4 , this time in graphical form as a tree structure . from the topmost mixedelement / mixedtype node there branch off at a first hierarchy level five further nodes which contain both the textual contents and also the elements “ firstelement 38 or , as the case may be , “ secondelement ”. at a second hierarchy level the elements “ firstelement ” and ” secondelement ” further contain the corresponding contents “ content of firstelement ” and “ content of secondelement ” respectively . documents based on the xml language can be represented by what is referred to as a tree structure , the contents of the xml document forming nodes in the tree structure and what are referred to as “ context paths ” leading to the nodes . binary structure codes are assigned to the nodes of the tree structure during the encoding . according to the prior art , for the element node “ mixedelement ” shown in fig4 , a structure code is assigned in each case to the parent node and also to the elements “ firstelement ” and “ secondelement ”. in this case the parent node is the node which is connected to the node of the element “ mixedelement ” in the next - higher hierarchy level . in contrast under the present disclosure , a structure code is not only assigned to the parent node and to the elements “ firstelement ” and “ secondelement ”, but is also assigned to the textual content . this is illustrated in fig5 , where the code 00 is assigned to the parent node , the code 01 to the textual content and the codes 10 and 11 to the “ firstelement ” and the “ secondelement ” respectively . furthermore , under another exemplary embodiment , “ position codes ” may be assigned to the individual textual contents , as shown in fig6 . since textual contents can occur at a total of three positions , three “ position codes ” are required for this purpose , the codes 00 , 01 and 10 being used according to fig6 . the above described description and drawings are only to be considered illustrative of exemplary embodiments , which achieve the features and advantages of the invention . modifications and substitutions to specific process conditions and structures can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention . accordingly , the invention is not to be considered as being limited by the foregoing description and drawings , but is only limited by the scope of the appended claims . iso / iec fdis 15938 - 1 “ information technology — multimedia content description interface — part 1 : systems —, geneva 2002