A dictionary data structure is one which is capable of storing objects in sorted order based on key such as a string or an integer. For instance, say you have several hundred Base objects which consist of the name of the Base, the latitude and longitude at which it is located, and its armaments. One way of storing these cities is to sort them by name; another is to store them in decreasing order by armaments; yet another is in increasing order by latitude. Primarily, the dictionary component will store objects based on some sort of a string key, such as the name of a Base or Target. The main purpose of the dictionary is to provide us with an easy way to see what data points we have already entered into our SoftWar database. The term data dictionary will be used in class to refer to this component, or to a collection of components having this role.