The right Data Structure for the job

[Ron M. Newman]

Hello Gurus--

I have a collection of attributed elements. Each element can have n number
of named attributes and a value. Let's assume each element represents a
person and one of the properties is "age" (integer, although byte would do
the trick as well, eh?).

I'd like to write an *efficient* method that allows me to query on different
attributes and return collections of elements that match certain criterias
like: "give me all elements with attribute "age" between 25 and 35".

hashing tables only work on comparison queries. I can create a hashing table
that uses age as key and references the element, but I can't query it for
ranges, only for exact values, and there is that duplicate key problem...
not good.

any ideas what I should use? I mean, I can use sorted lists of 'keys' and
maintain them myself and do binary search for the 'beginning' of a key and
move on until i step out of range. I wanted to know if .NET has anything
that addresses this problem.

thanks

Ron

[sdbillsfan]

How about using a datatable and dataview?

Ron M. Newman wrote:

Hello Gurus--

I have a collection of attributed elements. Each element can have n number
of named attributes and a value. Let's assume each element represents a
person and one of the properties is "age" (integer, although byte would do
the trick as well, eh?).

I'd like to write an *efficient* method that allows me to query on different
attributes and return collections of elements that match certain criterias
like: "give me all elements with attribute "age" between 25 and 35".

hashing tables only work on comparison queries. I can create a hashing table
that uses age as key and references the element, but I can't query it for
ranges, only for exact values, and there is that duplicate key problem...
not good.

any ideas what I should use? I mean, I can use sorted lists of 'keys' and
maintain them myself and do binary search for the 'beginning' of a key and
move on until i step out of range. I wanted to know if .NET has anything
that addresses this problem.

thanks

Ron

[GhostInAK]

Hello Ron,

You may want to look into LINQ.

-Boo

Hello Gurus--

I have a collection of attributed elements. Each element can have n
number of named attributes and a value. Let's assume each element
represents a person and one of the properties is "age" (integer,
although byte would do the trick as well, eh?).

I'd like to write an *efficient* method that allows me to query on
different attributes and return collections of elements that match
certain criterias like: "give me all elements with attribute "age"
between 25 and 35".

hashing tables only work on comparison queries. I can create a hashing
table that uses age as key and references the element, but I can't
query it for ranges, only for exact values, and there is that
duplicate key problem... not good.

any ideas what I should use? I mean, I can use sorted lists of 'keys'
and maintain them myself and do binary search for the 'beginning' of a
key and move on until i step out of range. I wanted to know if .NET
has anything that addresses this problem.

thanks

Ron