Introduction to Data Structures

Hi folks,

In this blog thread, I am going to explain the data structures that are considered to be the primitive elements of computing. Understanding and knowing about the Data Structure makes the Computer Science and IT professionals to get strengthened in logic and in building several complex systems efficiently.

DATA STRUCTURE

Data Structure is a systematic way to organize data to handle it efficiently. In other words, Data Structure can be defined as the method of organizing and storing data in a computer so that it can be accessed and modified efficiently.


BASIC COMPONENTS OF A DATA STRUCTURE
A Data Structure consists of three main components. They are

  1. collection of data values
  2. Relationships among them
  3. functions that can be applied to the data


FOUNDATIONS OF A DATA STRUCTURE
For a data structure, the two fundamental terms are as follows. They are

  1. Interface
  2. Implementation
INTERFACE



Each data structure has an interface. Interface represents the set of operations that a data structure supports. An interface only provides the list of supported operations, type of parameters they can accept and return type of these operations.

IMPLEMENTATION
Each data structure has an interface. Interface represents the set of operations that a data structure supports. An interface only provides the list of supported operations, type of parameters they can accept and return type of these operations.


CHARACTERISTICS OF A DATA STRUCTURE

  1. Correctness − Data structure implementation should implement its interface 
    correctly.
  2. Time Complexity − Running time or the execution time of operations of data structure must be as small as possible.
  3. Space Complexity − Memory usage of a data structure operation should be as little as possible.
NEED OF DATA STRUCTURE

As applications are getting complex and data rich, there are three common problems that applications face now-a-days.
  1. Data Search − Consider an inventory of 1 million(106) items of a store. If the application is to search an item, it has to search an item in 1 million(106) items every time slowing down the search. As data grows, search will become slower.
  2. Processor Speed − Processor speed although being very high, falls limited if the data grows to billion records.
  3. Multiple Requests − As thousands of users can search data simultaneously on a web server, even the fast server fails while searching the data.
To solve the above-mentioned problems, data structures come to rescue. Data can be organized in a data structure in such a way that all items may not be required to be searched, and the required data can be searched almost instantly.

APPLICATIONS

  1. Data structures helps to manage large amounts of data efficiently for large databases and Internet indexing services. 
  2. They are key to design efficient Algorithms. 
  3. They are used to organize the storage and retrieval of information stored in both main and secondary memory.


Location: Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

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