A corporation or organisation can use data as one of the most effective tools at their disposal if they wish to succeed in today’s cutthroat business environment. More options and better solutions to issues and challenges become available as more information becomes available.

However, this data has some substantial obligations, including a need to keep the information organised and easily accessible. If a firm can’t access the data and turn it into an asset that can be used, then all the data in the world won’t help it.

This conundrum leads us to the solution to a frequently asked question: What is data structure? This article will describe data structures, examine the many types of data structures, classify data structures, and discuss applications for data structures.

So, what exactly is data structure?
What is data? Let’s take a step back before defining data structures. Here is a brief response: Data are facts and statistics saved on computers that have been optimised for processing and transfer.

In order to efficiently organise, analyse, store, and retrieve information from a computer, data structures are a specific manner of grouping data in a specialised format. They are a method of handling data that makes it simple to use.

The cornerstone of every programme, piece of software, or application is made up of two elements: algorithms and data. Algorithms are rules and instructions that transform data into something programming-useful. Data is information.

Structures for linear data
In a linear data structure, the data elements are sequentially connected to one another, with each element connected to the elements in front of and behind it. This allows for the structure to be traversed in a single run. There are four types of linear data structures. As follows:

• Linked list
• stack
• array
• queue

Data Structures That Are Not Linear
the information structure where the data pieces are placed at random. The elements are not organised in order of precedence. Different layers of the data items are present. There are various ways for one element to go to another element in non-linear data structures. The non-linear data structures have connections between its data pieces and one or more other elements. Non-linear data structures come in two different varieties. As follows:

• Tree Data Structure
• Graph Data Structure

A Data Structure to Use
The following steps should be followed while selecting a data structure.

1) Analyzing the issue is the first step in figuring out the fundamental operations that must be supported. Examples of basic operations include adding a data item to the data structure, removing a data item from the data structure, and locating a specific data item.

2) Identify and quantify the resource limitations for each operation.

3) Establish which data structure best satisfies these demands.

Operations on Data Structures
The most frequent operations that can be performed on data structures are as follows:

Finding a specific item within a given data structure is the task of searching. Success is defined as the discovery of the essential component. Data structures like arrays, linked lists, trees, graphs, and others can all be used for searching.
Sorting involves putting all of the data items in a data structure in a specific order, such as ascending or descending.
New data items are inserted into the data structure during insertion.
The data structure’s data elements can be removed.
We can upgrade or swap out existing data structure components.

Correctness in Data Structure Implementation: A data structure should implement its interface correctly.
Time Complexity – Data structure operations’ running times or execution times must be as brief as is practical.
Space Complexity: The operation of a data structure should consume the least amount of memory possible.