title: A custom data structure in java
body: <p>I have a Tree structure on my swing UI. Each object in the Tree represents a element in the network. The elements in the network have alarms raised on it. Alarms (one or more) are represented in the UI with a bell image besides the network element. I use a Cache (TreeMap) to store the network elements with the name of the network element as the KEY and Alarms as Value. However, traversing the TreeMap is pretty in-efficient. The names of the network element are Strings. I would like to store the elements in a parent-child relation (like the real UI) and the STRING names fail to do that.</p>
  
  <p>I would like to create a custom data-structure which would emulate my UI hierarchy. I would think that customising linked list would do the job for me. Is there any tried and tested data-structure which I can use? Any other opinions highly appreciated.</p>