Any pointers?

Question

Hi I recently got this piece of work set as a practice for my finals, I will be given something similar in a lab and be given 3 hours to do it, I'm just wondering if anyone can give me any pointers on how to get started with this:
(a)     A firm that markets 15 different products wishes to store the total sales value achieved for each product at the end of the year in a computer based-system. It also wishes to be able to obtain some sales information from the system. When sales values are being entered into the computer system, product codes are used to identify the products. The products are assigned numerical codes from 1 to 15. Complete the class below by supplying the appropriate Java statements where indicated.
Supply appropriate comments
Import appropriate class or classes
                                             (2 marks)
public class Sales
define an appropriate data structure to store the sales values of 15 products
                                             (3 marks)
public void setsalesvalues()
write statements that will request a user to enter the sales values of each of the 15 different products and will store them.
                                             (5 marks)
public double getsalesValue(int productNo)
write statements that will return the sales value of the product identified by productNo if it is a valid product number but returns �1.0 if it is not a valid product number
                                             (5 marks)
public double getaveragesales()
write statements that will return the average sales value of the products
                                             (10 marks)
public void displaySalesInfo()
write statements that will display the following sales information in the
format shown below. You should include statement(s) that make use of
getaveragesales().
Sales Information
Product Number                    Sales Value.
1     �200000.00
2     �25000.00
Total sales                    �xxxxxxx.xx
Average Sales                    �xxxxxx.xx
                                        (15 marks)
public int getleastsold()
write statements that will return the product number of the first product with the smallest sales value.
                                        (5 marks)
public void displayHighest()
write statements that will display the highest sales value and the product number of the first product with that value.
}                                        (5marks)
     Comments                                    (5 marks)
     Choice of attribute names, types and structure of class     (5 marks)
(b)     Implement a Test class for the Sales class above.
The test class which should contain at least the main() method, should provide a
user with a list of options including the following:
1.     Enter sales values for all products
2.     Display Sales information
3.     Display the product number with the least sales value.
4.     Display the highest sales value and the product number of the first product with that value.
5.     Display the sales value of a given product.
6.     Display the average sales value
7.     Exit the program. Your program should seek confirmation from the user before terminating the session.
Your program should request a user to re-enter an option if an invalid one has been entered.
                                             (25 marks
(c)     Produce test runs and program output
Your test runs should show how data was entered, the results produced by your program. You should ensure that your test runs demonstrate that you have tested your classes very well using appropriate test data
                                                  (15 marks)

Answer 1

Right.. One supposes that it's semantics, but I
would say that Java doesn't have pointers strictly
speaking because they are not the same as C/C++
pointers. How did C/C++ get the honor of possessing the
canonical definition of "pointer"?
I bet daFfy has an answer for that one.
No, they're not the same as pointers as C/C++, but
how does that make them not-a-pointer? Java
references aren't the same as C++ references, so are
Java "references" not "references" either?I guess ints are not ints either.
As I understand it, "pointers" has a specific,
well-defined meaning in Java as well. After all, it
is a "NullPointerException", not a
"NullReferenceException". ;o)That's just because the junior coder was lazy and or careless. He was supposed to call it NullThingThatPointsButIsNotAPointerBecauseItIsNotTheSameAsACCPlusPlusPointerException
(And I haven't even had my morning coffee yet...)