This book provides a practical introduction to data structures from a viewpoint of abstract thinking and problem solving, as well as the use of Java.   It does this through what remains a unique approach that clearly separates each data structure’s interface (how to use a data structure) from it’s implementation (how to actually program that structure) into different parts of the book. Part I (Tour of Java), Part II (Algorithms and Building Blocks), and Part III (Applications) lay the groundwork by discussing basic concepts and tools and providing some practical examples, but implementation of data structures is not shown until Part IV (Implementations),  forcing the reader to think about the functionality of the data structures before the hash table is implemented.

The third edition of Data Structures and Problem Solving Using Java incorporates the enhancements of Java 5.0.  It includes coverage of generic programming, and content on the design of generic collection classes. This book is appropriate for readers who are familiar with basic Java programming concepts or are new to the language and want to learn how it treats data structures concepts.