In my job, I have to collect a heterogeneous set of files. Among the different types of files, I have spreadsheets, word processor documents in proprietary and open formats, pdfs, images in various formats and also my notes as text files.

My goal is to organize all this mix of data into a systematic set, easy to search and easy to reclassify and to keep.
Hopefully, I would like to set this up soon, in a matter of weeks.

I'm beginning to develop interest in xml and its potential. I have the feeling that it could meet my needs to handle different types of documents, create new ones, in a more organized fashion and consolidate my data. So far I'm reading some introductory material and I also understand that there are databases that handle xml natively.

My question at this point are:

1) Am I going in the right direction? Should I persist learning xml for this purpose? And if it is the case, what sequence of reading/training/tutorials do you recommend so that I develop some fluency with the tools?
2) Should I look into other tools/ways to efficiently handle my diverse/heterogeneous data?

Thanks a lot for reading this.

XML is a format for transferring data between applications - so yes, continue on. As a start take a look at w3schools, their lessons are short and easy to follow, you may also want to look at XSLT for transforming your data

In your case the data is based on the same type of object (files) so it will be fairly straight forward to generate the XML

cheers

Ref: http://www.w3schools.com/xml/default.asp
http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/default.asp

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On the other hand, it sounds like you might want some kind of "Content Management System".

By all means, take a look at Joomla or Drupal, and see if they might be useful to you.

Just a thought ..

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If you're planning to reenter/migrate all the data into your new data handling system, then you should consider MySQL.

If you're not, then look at this:

LXer: 7 of the Best Free Linux Document Management Systems

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Precious pointers I've got here.
I'm looking at them right now.
Thank you fellas.

The defining question would be, how much does data need to be shared by common applications? If the answer is 'a lot', then converting it to a common file format makes some sense. If not, then it is probably a waste of time. If your objective is purely a matter of organization, then either a document management system or content management system probably make more sense.

--- rod.

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