HND in Computing and Software

Engineering
SEC5213: Data Structures and Algorithm
Level: 5
Credit Value: 20

Lesson 01 – Introduction to Data Structures

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Lecturer: Ms. Sathananthy 06/04/2022
 Learning Outcome 01
Understand the concepts of Data structure and Algorithms

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 Outline

 Basics of Data structures :

 Terminologies

 Classification of data structures

 Diverse operations on data structures

 Areas where DSs are widely used in

 Abstract Data Types:

on the requirements of end users

• Specification, requirements gathering, design, verification, testing and maintenance

 It is important to understand that the subject of Data Structures and algorithms is

concerned with coding phase.

to store and manipulate data

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 Data Structures

 Data structures are ways in which the data is arranged in computer memory or in hard disk.

It is a way of storing data in computer so that it can be used efficiently

 Computer system is used as data management system where ‘data’ are very    important for

it. 
 Data are aggregated and summarized in various ways to form information. All these factors

very much depend on the way data are aggregated. The data structures are an effective and
reliable way to achieve this.
 Data structure is a named group of data of different data types which can be processed as a
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single unit.
 Data Structures – contd.

 Data Structure can be defined as the group of data elements which provides an efficient

way of storing and organizing data in the computer so that it can be used efficiently.
 Some examples of Data Structures are arrays, Linked List, Stack, Queue, etc.

 Data Structures are the main part of many computer science algorithms as they enable

the programmers to handle the data in an efficient way. It plays a vital role in enhancing
the performance of a software or a program as the main function of the software is to
store and retrieve the user's data as fast as possible

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 Terminologies

 Data: Data can be defined as an elementary value or the collection of values, for example,

student's name and its id are the data about the student.

 Group Items: Data items which have subordinate data items are called Group item, for

example, name of a student can have first name and the last name.

 Record: Record can be defined as the collection of various data items, for example, if we

talk about the student entity, then its name, address, course and marks can be grouped

together to form the record for the student.

 File: A File is a collection of various records of one type of entity, for example, if there

are 60 employees in the class, then there will be 20 records in the related file where each

record contains the data about each employee.

 Attribute and Entity: An entity represents the class of certain objects. it contains

various attributes. Each attribute represents the particular property of that entity.

 Field: Field is a single elementary unit of information representing the attribute of an

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 Need of Data Structures
As applications are getting complexed and amount of data is increasing day by day, there may arise the
following problems:
 Processor speed: To handle very large amount of data, high speed processing is required, but as the

data is growing day by day to the billions of files per entity, processor may fail to deal with that much
amount of data.
 Data Search: Consider an application needs to search for a particular item, it needs to traverse n items

every time, results in slowing down the search process.

there are the chances that a very large server can be failed during that process

In order to solve the above problems, data structures are used. Data is organized to form a data structure
in such a way that all items are not required to be searched and required data can be searched instantly.
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 classification of Data structures

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 Basic operations on Data structures

The basic operations that are performed on data structures are as follows

Insertion: Addition of a new data element in a data Structure at any location.

Deletion: Removal of a data element from a data structure if it is found.

Searching: Searching for the specified data element in a data structure.

Traversal: Visiting each element of the data structure in order to perform some specific
operation like searching or sorting.

Sorting: Arranging data elements of a data structure in a specified order is called sorting

Merging: Combining elements of two similar data structures to form a new data structure of
11 the same type, is called merging
 Data structures – contd.
Data Structures are widely used in almost every aspect of Computer Science i.e.
 Operating System,

 Compiler Design,

 Artificial intelligence,

 Graphics and many more.

Database Management System

Statistical analysis package

Numerical Analysis

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and Simulation. 06/04/2022
 Abstract Data Types (ADTs)

 Data Structures can be implemented using Abstract Data Types, In computing, an ADT is a

specification of a set of data and the set of operations that performed on that data

 An abstract data type (ADT) is the specification of a data type within some language,

independent of an implementation. The behavior of each operation is determined by its

inputs and outputs. An ADT does not specify how the data type is implemented.

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 Abstract Data Types (ADTs)

 Abstract: The definition can be mathematical or it can be programmed as an interface.

Interface provides a constructor, which returns an abstract handle to new operations,

which are functions accepting the abstract handle as an argument

 A stack or queue is an example of an ADT : Both stacks and queue can be implemented

using an array. It is possible to implement stacks and queues using linked list. This shows

that the abstract nature of stacks and queue.

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 Abstract Data Types: Examples

• Array

• List

• Map

• Queue

• Set

• Stack

• Table

• Tree

• Vector are ADTs.
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 Next - Introduction to algorithms

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