Data Structures are the programmatic way of storing data so that data can be used efficiently.
Almost every enterprise application uses various types of data structures in one or the other
way. This tutorial will give you a great understanding on Data Structures needed to understand
the complexity of enterprise level applications and need of algorithms, and data structures.
Why to Learn Data Structure and Algorithms?
As applications are getting complex and data rich, there are three common problems that
applications face now-a-days.
• 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(10 6) items every
time slowing down the search. As data grows, search will become slower.
• Processor speed − Processor speed although being very high, falls limited if the data
grows to billion records.
• 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 of Data Structure and Algorithms
Algorithm is a step-by-step procedure, which defines a set of instructions to be executed in a
certain order to get the desired output. Algorithms are generally created independent of
underlying languages, i.e. an algorithm can be implemented in more than one programming
language.
From the data structure point of view, following are some important categories of algorithms −
• Search − Algorithm to search an item in a data structure.
• Sort − Algorithm to sort items in a certain order.
• Insert − Algorithm to insert item in a data structure.
• Update − Algorithm to update an existing item in a data structure.
• Delete − Algorithm to delete an existing item from a data structure.
The following computer problems can be solved using Data Structures −
• Fibonacci number series
• Knapsack problem
• Tower of Hanoi
• All pair shortest path by Floyd-Warshall
• Shortest path by Dijkstra
• Project scheduling
Data Structure is a systematic way to organize data in order to use it efficiently. Following terms
are the foundation terms of a data structure.
• 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 − Implementation provides the internal representation of a data
structure. Implementation also provides the definition of the algorithms used in the
operations of the data structure.
Characteristics of a Data Structure
• Correctness − Data structure implementation should implement its interface
correctly.
• Time Complexity − Running time or the execution time of operations of data
structure must be as small as possible.
• Space Complexity − Memory usage of a data structure operation should be as little
as possible.
Need for Data Structure
As applications are getting complex and data rich, there are three common problems that
applications face now-a-days.
• 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(10 6) items every
time slowing down the search. As data grows, search will become slower.
• Processor speed − Processor speed although being very high, falls limited if the data
grows to billion records.
• 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.
Execution Time Cases
There are three cases which are usually used to compare various data structure's execution time
in a relative manner.
• Worst Case − This is the scenario where a particular data structure operation takes
maximum time it can take. If an operation's worst case time is ƒ then this
operation will not take more than ƒ time where ƒ represents function of n.
• Average Case − This is the scenario depicting the average execution time of an
operation of a data structure. If an operation takes ƒ time in execution, then m
operations will take mƒ time.
• Best Case − This is the scenario depicting the least possible execution time of an
operation of a data structure. If an operation takes ƒ time in execution, then the
actual operation may take time as the random number which would be maximum as
ƒ .
Basic Terminology
• Data − Data are values or set of values.
• Data Item − Data item refers to single unit of values.
• Group Items − Data items that are divided into sub items are called as Group Items.
• Elementary Items − Data items that cannot be divided are called as Elementary
Items.
• Attribute and Entity − An entity is that which contains certain attributes or
properties, which may be assigned values.
• Entity Set − Entities of similar attributes form an entity set.
• Field − Field is a single elementary unit of information representing an attribute of
an entity.
• Record − Record is a collection of field values of a given entity.
• File − File is a collection of records of the entities in a given entity se
