Enforcing compression problem

Hi all,

I am trying to setting up a sample test case demonstrating the compression capabilities but i got problems ensuring a message is compressed.
I have built the test case on the IceGrid example found in demoj/IceGrid/simple.
I have first added two new commands for the client:
b xxxx which sends a sequence of xxxx bytes
z xxxx which sends the same sequence but through a (i expect) proxy using compression.

Runtime: Ice 3.3.1
Platform: Windows XP SP2

I also modified the hello.ice definition:

module Demo {
        sequence<byte> Message;

        interface Hello {
	    idempotent void sayHello();
            void send(Message m);
            void shutdown();
	};
};

The client code is modified so that two proxies are created:

		HelloPrx hello = null;
		HelloPrx helloBzip = null;
		try {
			hello = HelloPrxHelper.checkedCast(communicator().stringToProxy(
					"hello"));
			System.err.println("Connected!\n"+hello.ice_getConnection()._toString());
			helloBzip = HelloPrxHelper.uncheckedCast(hello.ice_compress(true));
			if (helloBzip != null) {
				System.err.println("Compression is available!\n"+helloBzip.ice_getConnection()._toString());
			}
		} catch (Ice.NotRegisteredException ex) {
		}

In my 'b' command i call hello.send(buffer), and in the 'z' command i call helloBzip.send(buffer).

The server is running inside its node, like the original sample, and i modified the config parameters to allow large messages and having an endpoint with the '-z' hint:

         <server id="SimpleServer" activation="on-demand" exe="java">
            <option>-Xmx512M</option>
            <option>Server</option>
            <env>CLASSPATH=${ICE_LIB};bin</env>
            <properties>
               <property name="Ice.MessageSizeMax" value="102400"/>
               <property name="Ice.CacheMessageBuffers" value="0"/>
               <property name="Ice.Trace.Protocol" value="2"/>
            </properties>
            <adapter name="Hello" endpoints="default -p 9999 -z" id="${server}.Hello">
               <object identity="hello" type="::Demo::Hello" property="Identity"/>
            </adapter>
         </server>

The client configuration is also modified accordingly:

Ice.MessageSizeMax=102400
Ice.Trace.Network=1
Ice.Trace.Protocol=1

At runtime, everything is fine, the message is sent, the server activates on demand, etc.
But, the compression is never used, as the following trace shows:

==> z 100000000
[ 19/05/09 09:16:59:254 Protocol: sending request
  message type = 0 (request)
  compression status = 0 (not compressed; do not compress response, if any)
  message size = 100000044
  request id = 2
  identity = hello
  facet =
  operation = send
  mode = 0 (normal)
  context =  ]
[ 19/05/09 09:17:00:145 Protocol: received reply
  message type = 2 (reply)
  compression status = 0 (not compressed; do not compress response, if any)
  message size = 25
  request id = 2
  reply status = 0 (ok) ]
Sent 100000000 bytes in 1232.320588ms
==> [ 19/05/09 09:17:53:069 Protocol: sending close connection
  message type = 4 (close connection)
  compression status = 0 (not compressed; do not compress response, if any)
  message size = 14 ]
[ 19/05/09 09:17:53:069 Network: closing tcp connection
  local address = 127.0.0.1:4494
  remote address = 127.0.0.1:4061 ]
[ 19/05/09 09:18:05:070 Protocol: sending close connection
  message type = 4 (close connection)
  compression status = 0 (not compressed; do not compress response, if any)
  message size = 14 ]
[ 19/05/09 09:18:05:085 Network: closing tcp connection
  local address = 10.222.144.233:4527
  remote address = 10.222.144.233:9999 ]

I certainly did a naive assumption that using a proxy created by hello.ice_compress(true) will enable the compression facility for each call!

(I also noted that in the registry, the published endpoints do not display the '-z' flag, but i'm not sure if this is relevant or not in the admin GUI...)

where did i get wrong?
What are your recommendations to force the use of the compression in the application?

Thanks for your help.

Regards