This textbook, which offers a detailed treatment of data organization and data structures, has been used in management information systems (MIS) programs in business and computer science classes. The author mentions that her main objective has been “to structure and draw together the principles of data management and file processing in a readable presentation” and that with the second edition, “the organization of topics has been changed to emphasize better the interrelationships of sorting, searching, and structuring techniques.”

The book’s two sections cover data structures and the management and processing of files, respectively. After an introduction to data structures, the author presents eight chapters that cover arrays, records, stacks, queues, linked lists, graphs, general and binary trees, and searching and sorting files. The second section comprises seven chapters that cover file systems, sequential file organization, sorting and merging files, relative file organization, index structures, indexed sequential file organization, and multi-key file organization.

Each of these 15 chapters, which vary in length from 20 to over 40 pages, begins with an outline and contains several subdivisions that contain definitions, examples and descriptive figures, flowcharts, and other illustrations. Each chapter also includes a summary, references (mostly to journal articles), a list of terms introduced in the chapter, and numerous review exercises; answers to most of these exercises appear at the end of the book, after the 16-page glossary. Most chapters in this edition contain new references to literature from between 1983 and 1989.

To illustrate the design of the chapters and the level of coverage, let us consider chapter 6, “Linked Lists.” This chapter discusses linked list representation (with problems in sequential representation); the basic operations; managing available space; linked lists in Pascal using pointer variables; linked lists in COBOL and Pascal without using pointer variables; further manipulations of singly linked lists; and circularly linked lists and head nodes. It also includes sample applications of linked lists and has about 40 pages, 33 detailed figures, 7 references, and 26 review exercises.

The author generally uses flowcharts in COBOL and Pascal to present algorithms for building and manipulating data structures and file organizations. She also notes that the book is appropriate to support some of both the undergraduate and the graduate courses from the ACM Curriculum Committee on Computer Science. The book is clearly written; its abundance of figures and illustrations and its good glossary and index are a great help to the reader. It does require an introductory knowledge of computer systems and programming. In conclusion, this text is certainly suitable and useful for the classroom.