CSS 343  Final practice problems

Sometimes on the final exam I give "pull it all together" questions which
give a short problem and you need to tell me how you'd solve it, or to
store information.  Here's a few problems for you to practice on.  

1.  You're at a small company that currently has 10 departments.
    It is growing, but new departments are added rarely.
    The departments have names and can have an assigned code.
    Explain how you would store the information for a fast look-up.  

2.  You're trying to map out directions to get from one room in a
    building to another room in either the same building or a
    different one.  How would you store the information?  Why?

3.  You have a huge amount of sorted information, too much to
    fit into main memory.  You rarely do inserts once
    you have the initial data.  How do you store the
    information for a fast lookup?

4.  You have a small collection of rare books. How would you
    store the information so that it can be quickly found, but
    also can be listed alphabetically by author. Why?