All SwingX collection components (aka: table, tree, list ..) support searching out of the box, typically ctrl-f (or cmd-f on the Mac) opens a application search component for either batch or incremental search. The pattern matching is WYSIWYM - "What You See Is What You Match".

This demo illustrates extended configuration options of the match marker in incremental- which means the match marker is updated on typing - search mode. The marking is done by a SwingX Highlighter which can be installed by application code.