(Archived) Using Evernote as a Database

[kayus 0]

Is it possible to use Evernote as a database -- I want to build a simple dictionary (2-3 fields only) with about 170,000 entries over a period of five years. I also want to use Evernote as a simple book/movie database. Is this possible -- how do I do it? Use tags? Notes?

Thanks

[engberg 89]

I think Evernote could definitely be useful as a book/movie database. You could put the title and year into the note title, and you could give a bit more information about each entry, possibly with cover images, etc. You could make a "books" notebook and then put one note in there for each book. Then you could find those books by searching for text, or you could tag books (e.g. by genre, etc.) to help you find just the Mysteries. This sounds like a very interesting potential use of Evernote.

While I think that you could probably make a dictionary using Evernote, I don't know that this would necessarily be the best tool for this purpose ... our UI and display isn't really tuned for someone to easily browse through 170,000 tiny entries. E.g. the note display includes lot of headers, footers, etc. for every note that would be a little unnecessary if you're just storing a single line of text for each note. Again, I think this would work technically, but the end user experience might not be ideal.

[kayus 0]

Thanks a lot for the reply.

I envisage that one day Evernote would be able to substitute (and already does to a large extent) databases, notes and word processing programs (of course), diaries, all your list programs, even spreadsheets and presentation software. It would also eventually substitute all audio/video programs, including burning DVDs, MP3s, etc. And of course all PIM software. One should be also able to read all formats of ebooks on it. So the only thing one would really need on future computers would be Evernote, a web browser and on phones, Evernote Mobile and a web browser! I guess the UI would have to be tweaked a bit for this with more organizational capabilities, etc.

Good Luck!!

[salgud 12]

Thanks a lot for the reply.

I envisage that one day Evernote would be able to substitute (and already does to a large extent) databases, notes and word processing programs (of course), diaries, all your list programs, even spreadsheets and presentation software. It would also eventually substitute all audio/video programs, including burning DVDs, MP3s, etc. And of course all PIM software. One should be also able to read all formats of ebooks on it. So the only thing one would really need on future computers would be Evernote, a web browser and on phones, Evernote Mobile and a web browser! I guess the UI would have to be tweaked a bit for this with more organizational capabilities, etc.

Good Luck!!

But will it clean your toilets?

[paschott 0]

I think I'd have to agree with Dave on this one. "Yes, you could do this." However, in your case, you'd be better off building a small database to handle what you want to do. There are all sorts of platforms that are better suited for your needs than a program such as Evernote. No offense intended towards the Evernote team, but as Dave noted, the User Experience of using Evernote to search for small entries and such will be poor and will only grow worse as more data is added to the notebook.

From your initial description, you really want to design something small and custom tailored to your needs. Even if you just set up a single DB Table and separate out the fields (Year, Director, Actors, Summary, Title, Plot, Rating, etc), you'll get better performance just because you won't have to differentiate between the movies made in 1984 and the movie titled "1984". I just don't see a good way of handling that in a generic text lookup fashion. Add in the fact that you'd have to search pretty much one, maybe two "fields" and you're going to have poor performance.

I can agree with a couple of your other observations, though. Diaries, Notes, WP, Lists - those would all work really well. Not sure what is coming for the future of Evernote, but as we move further away from Notes/Text/Pics, it seems that you're trying to make the software do something it wasn't designed to do well. You can probably succeed, but you won't necessarily like the results. (I work for a software development company so I deal with this scenario often. )

[kayus 0]

Thanks, passchot, for your useful tips. I plan to eventually have an enormous dictionary with 500-1000 words for EACH ENTRY. So perhaps on day I can put it all into Evernote. Hobby of mine!

I have recently had a problem with synching -- it stopped at around 49 per cent. This started after I downloaded the latest update. So I created a non-syncrhonised folder, put all my stuff in there, re-synchronised, transferred all the data back where it originally was, and the problem is now solved! Hope this helps anyone who has a similar problem. However, I noticed that this procedure has DOUBLED my usage, which is not what I wanted! I hope I don't have to do this again!!

I am really enjoying your program.

[paschott 0]

Well, as noted, you can do it, but I don't think Evernote is necessarily the right platform for what you want in this case. From your initial entry, having 170k entries for a dictionary may result in poor lookup or search performance. That won't be too bad if you're just looking up the actual subject, but as you try to search through the words in your definition, it will probably perform worse and worse as time goes on due to sheer volume. I'm not sure what indexing scheme Evernote uses to assist with lookups, but a full-text index search can get expensive.

I realize that this is the tool you have in front of you at the moment, but you may want to do some searching to see what else is available that might work for you. If you're looking at purely online solutions, perhaps a simple PHP/MySQL App would work. If you don't feel like coding much, there are CMS packages that may have plug-ins to do what you want already. Most of those run off of PHP/MySQL and could probably support something like this pretty well if you have your own web server or hosted web server. I'm thinking of packages like Joomla or Drupal or TYPO3 or similar.

In any case, have fun. It sounds like you've got quite a project in mind!