Is there a format which can store tabular data in lesser size than excel?

Question

I have already tried out keeping in text file(Obviosuly it takes more space as it is not customized to hold tables as an excel is). I also tried keeping serialized data(c#, just an fyi). There wasn't any benefit in either cases.

Answer 1

Since most 'tabular' data will be text, you'll get large gains in compressing this before saving (using GZip and BsonWriter as an example):

public static byte[] Compress(object entity)
{
  using (var stream = new MemoryStream())
  {
    using (var zipStream = new GZipStream(stream, CompressionLevel.Optimal))
    {
      using (var writer = new BsonWriter(zipStream))
      {
        var serializer = new JsonSerializer();
        serializer.Serialize(writer, entity);
      }
    }

    return stream.ToArray();
  }
}

** Update **

Protobuf is far superior to both XmlSerializer and BinaryFormatter in terms of serialized entity size and speed. Try using this to serialize your entities before compressing:

public static byte[] Compress(object entity)
{
  using (var stream = new MemoryStream())
  {
    using (var zipStream = new GZipStream(stream, CompressionLevel.Optimal))
    {
      Serializer.Serialize(stream, entity);  
    }

    return stream.ToArray();
  }
}