Saturday, January 21, 2012

Java Collection Framework Overview

Collection framework introduced in java from java 2 platform . A collection is a group of objects that represent a group of objects. Those who are familiar with C++ STL , it will be easy to understand for them as a beginner . But it's not tough concept to grab for new learner.

As a java application developer one can got some advantages with collection framework :
  • Programming effort reduction by providing useful data structures and algorithm.
  • Increase application performance.
  • Provides interoperability between unrelated APIs
  • Reduces the effort required to learn APIs
  • Reduces the effort required to design and implement APIs
  • Fosters software reuse
The collections framework consists of:
  • Collection Interfaces
  • General-purpose Implementations
  • Legacy Implementations
  • Special-purpose Implementations
  • Concurrent Implementations
  • Wrapper Implementations
  • Convenience Implementations
  • Abstract Implementations
  • Algorithms
  • Infrastructure
  • Array Utilities
There are fourteen collection interfaces.
The most basic interface is Collection. These interfaces extend Collection: Set, List, SortedSet, NavigableSet, Queue, Deque, BlockingQueue and BlockingDeque. The other collection interfaces, Map, SortedMap, NavigableMap, ConcurrentMap and ConcurrentNavigableMap do not extend Collection, as they represent mappings rather than true collections. However, these interfaces contain collection-view operations, which allow them to be manipulated as collections. (ref: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/collections/overview.html)

Collection Implementations



Implementations
Hash Table Resizable Array Balanced Tree Linked List Hash Table + Linked List
Interfaces Set HashSet
TreeSet
LinkedHashSet
List
ArrayList
LinkedList
Deque
ArrayDeque
LinkedList
Map HashMap
TreeMap
LinkedHashMap



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