Whats The Best Data Structure For A Calendar / Day Planner?

I'm an intermediate programmer. I know C very well, Java somewhat well, and have just done some very basic programming with Python, Shell, and Applescript. I'm writing the program

Solution 1:

I'd recommend using sqlite3. Take a look at the api for python here http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0249/.

You could use another relational db with the same api, but for the scale of your app sqlite3 gives some ease of use benefits, and you could always switch dbs. It's straight forward and simple for your application. Also, it's the more typical relational database, so you'll be able to find plenty of information.

You could use one of the more popular non-relational like http://www.mongodb.org/, and if you have no experience with SQL this may be easier to grasp (I'm not sure about this though, take a look for yourself.) Mongo supports several drivers (http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Drivers), but I do recommend going with python for something like this for ease of implementation. ie. http://docs.python.org/library/calendar.html is very nice.

Additionally, there's also things like https://storm.canonical.com/Tutorial for sqlite3 and http://mongoengine.org/ for MongoDB. Depending on your experience and scope of the project these may be very worth learning. Really, as things get larger and more complicated, using a ORM layer becomes more worth it. On the flip side, if your are very familiar with SQL, and relational database schemas, it may not be worth the effort to learn a new API for a solo project.