Structuring your Memento Database

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This page is in its infancy, is incorrect, incomplete, and under development.

If you're just starting with Memento or just starting to use it for something new, it may not be clear to you how to represent your data in Memento to allow the user to get what he/she wants out of it. This article suggests some approaches to consider.

Structuring simply - One Main Thing

The simplest use of Memento is to use a single library to represent data about a single thing.

Simple uses

For instance, you might want to have a To Do list in Memento. As is often the case, it could be anywhere from very simple to pretty complex. Let's start with the very simplest one, so see Tutorial:Simple To Do List.

Another simple use would be as a library of recipes. Could you use Memento in a very simple way to catalog your recipes and then look them up later? The easy answer is yes. See Tutorial:Simple Recipes.

The key to simplicity is that all information in this library is about the task or recipe as a whole. These simple solutions don't try to define details of ingredients, nutrition, task duration, or due dates — just the Tasks and the Recipes themselves.

Pages of simple data

If you're keeping a lot of information (many fields) in a library about something — as often happens with media, like a movie, a song, or a photo — you can keep the fields on the Entry View & Entry Edit cards organized using Pages. Each page shows as a tab on the cards and holds the fields you've assigned to those pages; otherwise, all fields will show up on the MAIN page.

Pages don't really change the structure of the data; they just provide a potentially nicer way of viewing them. Other ways of affecting the appearance of fields on a page include changing their font (font family, style, size, and color), having them not show on the card, having their appearance be dependent on the value of another field, or showing them on the same line as a preceding field.

Simple with lists

Fields that can have one or more of several values can be represented as lists (single-choice or multiple-choice), radio buttons, or checkboxes. Integer Values fields are similar. They help in several ways:

  • They cut down on the amount of typing.
  • They remind the user of the possible values of the field.
  • They prevent typos from inadvertently cluttering the library.

Using special data

Some field types have special handling, such as barcodes, images, audio clips, and video clips. These field types have special functions, but in terms of data structure, they are simple, like Text and Integer.

Simple slicing & dicing

Structuring - Multiple related things

When to use a list vs multiple libraries

Master & detail

When more libraries are needed

Slicing & dicing when using multiple libraries

Structuring - Serious slicing & dicing

Structuring - Enhancing your visual presentation

Fields sharing a row

Field fonts & colors

List items with fonts, colors, and icons

Using images

Charting your data

Structuring - Leveraging the Internet

Using Autofill

Using barcodes



the casual, perhaps single-library user
who just wants to throw up a grocery list or recipe repository
the intermediate user
who might want to have some related libraries tracking some activities
the power user
who might be pushing the boundaries in certain areas, like scripting, complex data structure, retail or barcode solutions, media solutions, contact applications, product catalogs, charting, or others
the organizational user
who might need teamwork collaboration, cross-platform compatibility, cloud storage & coordination, library protection, and others

Memento's online catalog of user templates contains thousands of predefined, ready-to-use libraries to use directly or serve as a starting place. It also gives users the opportunity to familiarize themselves with a large number of ways to use Memento to provide solutions.