Objective: To gain experience in programming with tree data structures; to practise building larger applications from a variety of data structures; to gain awareness of managing resources (both space and time) in programming with tree data structures.

Please note: This assignment speci?cation aims to provide as complete a description of this assessment task as possible. However, as with any speci?cation, there will always be things we should have said that we have left out and areas in which we could have done a better job of explanation. As a result, you are strongly encouraged to ask any questions of clari?cation you might have, either by raising them during a lecture or by posting them on the iLearn discussion forum devoted to this assignment.

Tree-structured databases

A database is an arrangement of stored data which is set up so that the data can be queried easily. Almost every "information system" has inside it some kind of database. In some applications the database is not static, but rather must change dynamically whenever its content is updated. A typical scenario could be to store data in an automated enquiry service, which is becoming typical of today's telephone-enquiry services. The data base would store a selection of questions having "yes/no" answers in order to identify the category of the enquiry, with the system then giving the user some useful information most related to the identi?ed category. The most advanced enquiry services allow the system actually to update itself in the case it "learns" a new category.

In this assignment you will practise the basics of how to program a database system which can learn new categories and update itself automatically.

A simple Animal/Vegetable/Mineral Guessing game

In this assignment you will be asked to program a tree-based implementation of a simple "Animal/ Vegetable/Mineral" game. You have been provided with a number of program and speci?cation ?les, and several executables. The executables give you an idea of what your programs should do when they are correctly implemented, compiled and executed. The ?les are as follows.