Java in memory SQL Table like data structure

Several times I have wanted a data structure that is similar to a SQL Table where you can select on various fields and multiple fields. Similar to an in memory SQL implementation except that I don't want to store that many objects in the data structure.

I also require the object to be serializable through standard Java means.

I have done this before with multiple hash tables or custom hash keys but it ended up being a lot of code and very specific the problem.

I have also used Groovy with its closure ability and gpath to help but I don't always have it available (different projects).

EDIT: I think my problem is more of an object traversal/selection problem Here are some interesting projects:

• http://josql.sourceforge.net/
• http://homepages.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~djp/JQL/
• http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2006/08/03/java-object-querying-using-jxpath.html
• http://code.google.com/p/lambdaj/ (I used this in the past and it was.... slow...)
• http://jedi.codehaus.org/ Jedi

However the downside to most of these projects is that they are muc开发者_开发百科h slower than accessing the objects directly (non reflection getter/setter) and definitely slower than an index (hash).

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JavaDB and HSQLDB, among others, have fully in-memory databases.

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What concerns you about using in-memory SQL storage for these purposes? You'd save a ton of development time; performance overhead is really insignificant. You risk much more by trying to implement this yourself.