In response to receipt of an input string, an attempt is made to identify, in a template store, a closely matching template for use as a compression template. In response to identification of a closely matching template that can be used as a compression template, the input string is compressed into a compressed string by reference to a longest common subsequence compression template. Compressing the input string includes encoding, in a compressed string, an identifier of the compression template, encoding substrings of the input string not having commonality with the compression template of at least a predetermined length as literals, and encoding substrings of the input string having commonality with the compression template of at least the predetermined length as a jump distance without reference to a base location in the compression template. The compressed string is then output.