Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft® Windows® DNA Programming in 21 Days

Introducing Hierarchical Data Structures

Hierarchical data structures are everywhere in computing yet, until recently, you have not had an easy way to work with them. What are hierarchical data structures? They look like trees (see Figure 12.1). You use them every day when you use the Windows operating system. Mapped into the namespace of Windows are directory trees. The Windows Explorer represents all the objects in your system as a tree view. Expand and contract the tree (click the [+] and [-] symbols, respectively), and you can view the various nodes of that tree. This sort of hierarchical view has become very commonplace yet the traditional forms of storing and representing data have not improved to work with this data—that is, not until ...