This is a six-part article series that focuses on important data structures and their use in application development. Scott Mitchell examines both built-in data structures present in the .NET Framework, as well as essential data structures we’ll build ourselves.
 
Editor’s Note: This six-part article series originally appeared on MSDN Online starting in November 2003. In January 2005 it was updated to take advantage of the new data structures and features available with the .NET Framework version 2.0, and C# 2.0. The original articles are still available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vcsharp/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/datastructures_guide.asp.
An Extensive Examination of Data Structures Using C# 2.0, Part 1
Scott Mitchell examines two of the most commonly used data structures present in the .NET Framework: the Array and List.
 
An Extensive Examination of Data Structures Using C# 2.0, Part 2
Scott Mitchell delves into three of the most commonly studied data structures: the Queue, the Stack, and the Hashtable. He goes on to explain the pros and cons of each individual data structure.
 
An Extensive Examination of Data Structures Using C# 2.0, Part 3
Scott Mitchell looks at a common data structure that is not included in the .NET Framework Base Class Library, binary trees. A binary search tree, or BST, allows for a much more optimized search time than with unsorted arrays.
 
An Extensive Examination of Data Structures Using C# 2.0, Part 4
Scott Mitchell provides a quick examination of AVL trees and red-black trees, which are two different self-balancing binary search tree data structures. He also covers skip lists, an ingenious data structure that turns a linked list into a data structure that offers the same running time as the more complex self-balancing tree data structures.
 
An Extensive Examination of Data Structures Using C# 2.0, Part 5
Scott Mitchell espouses on graphs, a collection of nodes and edges with no rules dictating the connection among the nodes, and one of the most versatile data structures.
 
An Extensive Examination of Data Structures Using C# 2.0, Part 6
Scott Mitchell examines how to implement a common mathematical construct, the set, which is an unordered collection of unique items that can be enumerated and compared to other sets in a variety of ways.