Hello,
I am cooking up an application that when I first thought of figured would not be difficult. Basically, what I am thinking of is an application that will track the growth of several of my mothers orchids (I know it is kinda of weird, but this is something that she does by hand in a journal and thought it would be nice for her and also to test my capabilities).

This is how I would like the program to flow:
---My mother selects a plant and date from two drop down lists in order to look at past
---entries for a specific plant.
The first list would will find the name of the plant, and then populate the second drop down list with the entries, if any, that she has saved for that plant. The data for the plant will populate either a text field or a table, depending on the route that I take.
---My mother selects to enter a new entry
This would allow her to create a new plant and allow her to start making entries for the plant.

Now, this is where im starting to become boggled. What, in your opinions, would be the best route for saving the data. XML seems to be top on my list at the moment, but is a little out of my league right now. Formatted text files would most likely be the easiest.

I am in no way asking " Hey someone write this application for me!!". I would like help finding resources and possible tutorials that would deal with what I am looking for. I have found examples, but nothing seems to accomplish what I have in mind. I am not completely new to java, but am in no way an expert. Any help/suggestions would be much appreciated.
Thanks!!

A DB. JavaDB if you don't want to have to use a server.

Edit: Although this still looks like a "do my homework for me question", I will give you the benefit of a doubt, at the moment.

I would rather use database then XML which is still hairy for me. As for the resources you should have close look at AWT or Swing for starter here

Thank you very much for the quick replies. No I assure you this is not a homework problem nor do i want someone to indirectly do all of this for me. I want to research and learn the areas that I need to in order to make this a reality, and just wanted some guidance in the direction that i should be taking. I will read up on javaDB and i'm sure I will be posting some more questions in a little bit. Thanks again for the push in the right direction.