News Trends Tutorials Stats Hardware Reviews OS Roundup Hot Topics Forum Product Watch Glossary Web FTP Mail Application Proxy Real-Time Comm Collaboration Operating Systems Sitemap Contact Us Home Become a Marketplace Partner IT Developer Internet News Small Business Personal Technology Search internet.com Advertise Corporate Info Newsletters Tech Jobs E-mail Offers Be a Commerce Partner

Enter a keyword...   ...or choose a category. choose one... Communications Computer Industry Companies Computer Science Data Graphics Hardware Internet and Online Services Mobile Computing Multimedia Networks Operating Systems Programming Software Standards Types of Computers World Wide Web   hierarchical Last modified: Sunday, September 01, 1996  Refers to systems that are organized in the shape of a pyramid, with each row of objects linked to objects directly beneath it. Hierarchical systems pervade everyday life. The army, for example, which has generals at the top of the pyramid and privates at the bottom, is a hierarchical system. Similarly, the system for classifying plants and animals according to species, family, genus, and so on, is also hierarchical. Hierarchical systems are as popular in computer systems as they are in other walks of life. The most obvious example of a hierarchical system in computers is a file system, in which directories have files and subdirectories beneath them. Such a file organization is, in fact, called a hierarchical file system . In addition to file systems, many data structures for storing information are hierarchical in form. Menu-driven programs are also hierarchical, because they contain a root menu at the top of the pyramid and submenus below it.   Related Categories Data Structures Related Terms BPDU directory file management system flat file system journaled file system STP tree structure Books hierarchical Products Shop by Top Models: Svetlana Kiritchenko - Hierarchical Text Categorization 2 store offers from $98 - $114 Andrew Gelman and Jennifer Hill - Data Analysis Using Regression And Multilevel/Hierarchical Models 2 store offers from $94 - $99 Andrew Gelman and Jennifer Hill - Data Analysis Using Regression And Multilevel/Hierarchical Models 2 store offers from $41 - $42 Mario Bebendorf - Hierarchical Matrices: A Means to Efficiently Solve Elliptic Boundary Value Problems 2 store offers from $87 - $123 Andrew B. Lawson - Bayesian Disease Mapping: Hierarchical Modeling in Spatial Epidemiology 2 store offers from $68 - $76