Q:

WCF Data Service compression for an Android client

I use a WCF Data Services service that resides in a Windows Service program and get data with an Android phone using Odata4j. I get lots of data from it and I need to compress the data coming from the Data Service. I was thinking of GZip as a standard compressing algorythm and Android should have the necessary decoding methods.
Is it possible? I couldn't find the compression settings for my data service let alone the Android side of the decompression. What is the best way to accomplish this?

A:

So here are my findings regarding to the compression problem.

With a WCF Data Service in a Windows Service, you cannot create compression because you cannot modify the output as there is no HTTPContext - it is a property of the ASP context that can be found only in IIS (Express)
You need an IIS for compressing the data - it is easy that way
Much to my astonishment, the compressed data could be read by odata4j without any modification
It is good to know that the decompressing of the incoming data takes notable time, comparable to the time gained by transferring less data

See here for more information.

