Java Collection issue

am facing issue on how to store and then retrieve data . In my program which is simple java class i am retrieving data at 3 places from an xml. i need to store this temporarly in particular fashion as data is related and needed to be used later on at end program to generate report.

first data i am retireving is employee names eg Tom , Reggie, Martha.
Second data is department (Each employee belongs to 1 or many department ) so in this case

Tom : Billing
Reggie : Admin , HR
Martha : IT

Third data is Department number (This has 1 : 1 relationship with Department )
Billing :01
Admin :02
HR:03
IT:04

So when i am parsing xml first i am getting employee data, then department and lastly department number. I need to store it in collection in such way later on i can retireve and link data and use it.....

Which java collections i should use....

"zaxxon25",
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thanks,
Dave.

Hi zaxxon25 (Please make it realistic),

I suppose the third data of Department number is fixed so you can use class scope
hashtable which will be populated only once, for the other data you can create a bean ( inner class or outer if your project permits)

class EmpTempData{

public EmpTempData(Hashtable deptNumbers){
this.deptNumber=deptNumbers;
}
private String empName;
private ArrayList empDepartment;
/*
containing "deptName" and "deptNumber" pair
*/
private Hashtable deptNumbers;

//getter setter methods of empName,empDepartment and deptNumbers

// method to get department numbers corresponding to department name

public Hashtable getEmpDeptNameAndNumber(){
// implementation
}
}