Every SOAP message has an Accept-Encoding and a Content-Encoding header. The Accept-Encoding header field consists of a comma-separated list of encoding formats that PowerCenter Integration Service supports. These include gzip and deflate. Content-Encoding header specifies the compression algorithm that the web services host uses to compress SOAP responses.

To compress SOAP requests, the PowerCenter Integration Service adds a string in the Accept-Encoding header in the SOAP request. Based on the Accept-Encoding header that the PowerCenter Integration Service sets in the SOAP request, the web services host compresses SOAP responses and specifies the compression algorithm in the Content-Encoding header. libcurl reads the Content-Encoding header in the SOAP request and decodes the SOAP response using the corresponding compression algorithm.