Generic Programming in JDK1.5


http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/collections/index.html

A collection is an object that represents a group of objects

• Reduces programming effort by providing useful data structures and algorithms so you don't have to write them yourself.
• Increases performance by providing high-performance implementations of useful data structures and algorithms. Because the various implementations of each interface are interchangeable, programs can be easily tuned by switching implementations.

There are nine collection interfaces. The most basic interface is Collection. Five interfaces extend Collection: Set, List, SortedSet, Queue, and BlockingQueue. The other three collection interfaces, Map, SortedMap, and ConcurrentMap do not extend Collection, as they represent mappings rather than true collections.