best data structure

Hi everybody. I'm trying to choose the best data structure to hold the following information:

I have a Student class, which consists of several data member and methods. I need to be able to process a list of thousands of Students in any order, but I also need to be able to reference each Student from the list individually. I will adding to and removing form the list very frequently.

Would an ArrayList make the most sense for this?

Thanks.

What do you mean by "in any order"? And what is the search key of the students? Some unique ID? Simply the array index (bad idea!)?


I recommend a binary tree, but depending on the finer points of your usage a hash table might be more appropriate. Besides, there's also the other issue of map or set: if you sort the objects by themselves you need a set (TreeSet, HashSet) and implement Comparable for Student (for TreeSet) or give Student.hashCode a meaningful override (for HashSet). If you sort by an external key you use a map (TreeMap, HashMap). Only the key type (probably a String or a Long) needs Comparable or hashCode, and both have it.