Java Data Structures

When working with data, we must choose the best data structure to manipulate the data set in order to achieve efficient results. A very basic array can store information without a problem, but is inefficient when we are constantly storing and searching for data. The idea of a table is created to increase the efficiency and avoid such problems. Tables store data using a tuple <Key, Value>. We choose a special field of an object, and use it to uniquely identify the entire object. Therefore, when we store and search for an object, we will use the key to save or search for the object. Ideally, this will reduce the algorithm to O(1). For this assignment, you are allowed to use a HashTable, or a HashMap. For this assignment, we are working with a real auction data online. The data will be in the form of an XML file. There may be extraneous data that we do not need in our analysis. We will selectively limit our object construction with information that we are interested in.