I'm terrible when it comes to writing down notes. I write notes on any bits of scrap paper and I can find, and then of course they got lost and I lose important information. I've decided that enough is enough, and I now want to make a program that offers the flexibility of writing notes on paper, but with more advantages and none of the disadvantages. I find existing note taking programs too restrictive, so I've decided to make my own.

My main problem is finding a suitable data storage system. Before I mention my criteria/requirements, I should mention that one of the main design goals of the program is that it should be built in a 'core' with multiple interfaces on top (e.g. wxPerl, web-based or terminal). Data will be stored locally but it must be possible to sync to an external source (probably just an FTP server somewhere, but maybe WebDAV if I can figure it out).

As the data will be mostly unstructured (as users will type in the note, a few words to describe it, optionally a title, optionally a category and optionally a date associated with the note), I'm having trouble thinking of a suitable means of data storage. Each of the 'usual suspects' doesn't quite seem suitable:

• Database: too awkward, too difficult to install for users. Makes syncing more difficult.
• Serialised data structures (either with Data::Dumper or YAML): easy to 'parse', but relies too heavily on storing all items in memory.
• XML using XML::Parser or LibXML: argh... just not sure if I can be bothered.

Any advice would be appreciated.

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