Personal Data Manager is basically a folder manager for any kind of data. It can replace the specific folder management feature provided by many application (file explorer, email client, bookmark management in web browser, etc) by providing a single folder structure to organize all kind of data.

How it works

To add a data (file, email, bookmark, …) in Personal Data Manager, you just have to drag & drop in the folder structure browser. Then, a reference to the data is stored in the folder, which means that nothing is performed on the data itself. It remains where it is. This also means that the same data can be referenced in several folders (exactly like the “label” concept of Google GMail web client).

From the Personal Data Manager UI, you can manage your folder structure and select & open the data contained in the folders. This will open the native application associated to the data.

List of features

Folder structure management features:

• Create folder
• Delete folder
• Move folder (cut/paste or drag&drop)

Data reference management features:

• Open : opens the data in the native application
• Remove : dialog to ask if referenced file should be deleted as well
• Copy Ref : copies the reference to the clipboard
• Copy Data : copied the referenced data to the clipboard
• Paste
• Search : search related data
• Explore : if the data is a file, opens a file explorer

Why should you use Data Manager ?

Your first reaction after reading the description of Personal Data Manager will probably be: “what about Google Desktop” (or any equivalent/concurrent tool)?

It is true that Google Destop is also dealing with data management. But the main difference with PDM is the usage. Although it is useful to be able to search quickly on a whole set of personal data (files, emails, urls, …), it does not replace the explicit “store in folder” action that you perform after you receive an email or “select a folder” when you create a new document.

With Personal Data Manager, you get 2 main advantages:

1. You can organize all your data inside one single tool. You can forget the previous folder manager feature provided by native applications. Keep all your emails in the “Inbox” and use PDM to organize your email. Keep all your files in the same folder and use PDM to organize your files. Use PDM to manage your bookmarks.
2. You can store the same data in different folders. Since PDM does not really manage the physical data but only creates data references, you can create several references to the same data (email, file, …) in different folders. This is exactly the same concept as the notion of “label” provided by GMail except that you can manage the "labels" in a tree structure.

Current Limitations

• email management (see on the Discussion newsgroup for more details)
• search feature. The plan is to use lucene to index the data when they are added in a folder.

Additional ideas

• Manage physical file storage when necessary (Local storage perimeter concept + PDM local storage): a local storage perimeter is configured to define the static hard drives of the computer. When referencing a data that in not inside this perimeter, PDM suggests to make a (physical)) copy of the file in the PDM local storage folder (which must belong to the local storage perimeter).
• Pré-visualisation of the data
• Manage meta data on referenced data (tag, comments, or any additional attribute).
• Features on a folder that would apply to the real data referenced in the folder (copy, build zip file, ...). This means that PDM's kind of "virtual folders" could be used to perform operations that are aplicable to real folders.
  Remark: This would work fine (and could be usefull) for files, but does it have sense for other kind of datas (email, ...)
• Web Server mode, in order to share PDM folders and referenced data with other users.

TODO

Short term

• Installer
• Re-design the UI
• Re-implement the persistence layer using hsqldb + hibernate (instead of objectdb which is not open-source)

Mid term

• Implement soap API (using xFire)
• Support any email client (not only outlook)

Longer term

• Embedded web server + web UI ?
• Data indexation (using Lucene) + search function (including “distance” filter when searching arround a reference)