Implementing Tree Sort Algorithms

Implementing tree sorted data structures has become a very important thing, when it comes to storing data in large amounts. The key factor, to understand why this is such an important thing, is to realize that the way things are sorted, makes it much easier to analyze large amounts of data. The reason why sorting is so important, is that when the data is sorted, you can make it much easier to analyze the information and make decisions on what to do with the data.

For example, lets say you have a company that sells products to kids, they will most likely need to sort through a number of different children’s records. They will then sort the data by age. This means they will need a way to deal with all the data, efficiently. If we used a typical data structure, we would probably have a list of child records, with each record separated into two or more parts, with labels for each part. In a worst case scenario, they might even have separate lists for boys and girls.

However, sorting makes it so much easier to deal with data in general, and specifically with large amounts of data. In the previous example, sorting the data would take ages. So, a data structure that was sorting, would have to keep track of how things were sorted, and would also have to deal with sub-lists. A fully sort data structure would be very inefficient and difficult to use. So, how can we achieve the benefits from using tree sorted data structures?

The answer is simple. You just need to implement the sorting in a way that is tree like. The idea is to have each data element is added to a list, and then sort the data, by adding each item to the sorted list. So, for example, lets say your company sales orders go like this, we have salesmen, and salesman that go to customers, and then send the order off.

So, for each customer that is sent an order, its information would go into the order listing. Then for each customer that is sent a check, its information would go into the check listing. If you sorted the list and used the sort option, you would end up with things like: Order number, First name, Last name, City, State, zip code, Phone, Fax, Amount, etc. Of course, these are just some examples. The important thing to note here is that each item in the list has to be somehow related to the other items in the list.

What if you were to implement sorting by zip code, and had an item that was sent from New York, and an item that was sent from San Francisco. Well, since they both have a lot of traffic going to their area, the data would have to be coded such that it would be easy to identify which came from where, and therefore, it would be much easier to serve them. In the past, programmers would sort the data by name, and this worked fine, however, it didn’t help when the data wasn’t in a format that could be understood by computers. Nowadays, if you are going to use sorting by data structure, you need to keep things in categories.

You may think that there isn’t a lot of typing involved, but there is a little bit. Take a minute or two to type each item’s name into a text editor, then have a look at what you’ve written. You might spend a few hours just typing this stuff. When you finally get it all down, and it works, then you’ll be able to tell if the order was successful.

In any case, implementing tree sorts can be a little tricky. You can get a software program that will do this for you. However, you still have to figure out the criteria for your data structures. Remember, sometimes the data structure doesn’t matter, and the system will still work. Other times, you might need to upgrade your equipment, and that can make things a little more difficult.