...and optionally a date associated with the note

Were it me, I would timestamp every note rather than making it optional. People are always writing stuff down and forgetting where the note is, but I bet you they can remember the ball-park of when they wrote it. So, you're giving them a comon place to put all of their notes, but it sounds like the organization scheme is completely optional. Timestamping each note at least gives them an organization that they are familiar with and can use in lieu of creating their own.

Serialised data structures (either with Data::Dumper or YAML): easy to 'parse', but relies too heavily on storing all items in memory.

Who says you need to store all of the items in memory? Who even says that you even need the entire contents of a single record in memory?

duff

In reply to Re: Data storage for a flexible note-taking program? by duff
in thread Data storage for a flexible note-taking program? by SuperCruncher

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.