THE SCOPE
Trees, hash tables, indexes, graphs, persistent structures and memory models.
This starting dossier establishes a research remit and reference points for the section. It does not claim to be a comprehensive historical survey. Future articles will identify primary evidence, publication or artifact dates, competing accounts and the limits of verification.
The same abstraction can hide different costs
An associative map might use hashing or ordered trees; practical costs depend on workload and implementation details.
Structure and storage interact
Cache layout, serialization, concurrency and durability all influence how a structure performs outside textbook conditions.
Dates must be attached to evidence
Historical accounts should distinguish first descriptions from implementations, popularization and later refinements.
OPEN QUESTIONS / NOT ASSUMPTIONS
Questions that guide the reporting.
- 01Which operation and workload are being measured?
- 02What guarantees, if any, are offered for ordering and concurrency?
- 03Is the example an original historical implementation or a modern teaching reconstruction?
PRIMARY & TECHNICAL REFERENCES
Starting sources
The references below are paths into the evidence, not a claim that every historical question is settled. Each future article will provide its own direct citations and version-specific evidence.
- 01NIST — data-structure entries xlinux.nist.gov
- 02SQLite — B-tree module www.sqlite.org
VERSION RECORD / 1.0
This dossier is revisable.
2026-10-08 — Initial edition. Research scope, evidence lenses, questions and reference starting points published. No external submissions have been reviewed for this initial edition. Future substantive changes should be documented with supporting evidence.
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