I’ve been reading through “How to organize database for archives of local newspaper?” from the forums to get ideas about designing a new database that’s very different from the organization of all my other ones like my financial db (copies of all bills, statements, etc - a very simple organization relying exclusively on group hierarchy). I want to store a myriad of articles on investment topics - company reports, analyses, economic studies, investment strategies, etc.
I thought I’d post to see if I can get more ideas for this specific topic, as the article above covers many ideas but for a different use case. I suspect this investment database is not a simple one like my other ones that primarily rely on the folder/group hierarchy. Investment articles have many relationships - there is the subset that focuses on a specific company, another that relates to a company’s sector, and general economic articles that pair a company or sector or country with a cycle.
I have used several apps in the past (most recently is TheBrain in concert with DTPO) but I never seem to get a workflow/data management system that feels good. I thought TheBrain could be used to add structure while DTPO would reference external files where the AI (using See Also) could augment the visual organization in TheBrain. At this point, I’m going back to DTPO (but still plan to use another app for additional data and structure), but I think I need to begin relying of features that I haven’t needed in the past nor used in my other databases.
I am frequently gathering PDF files of articles I find at a variety of investment sites and documents received from investment services that cover the current state of individual companies, sector analyses that include companies within a sector and the business climate in those sectors, posts of current economic/political news (e.g. having to do with the Fed and other central banks, and anything that includes analyses of economic conditions in the US and abroad), and any other pieces of news/facts/opinions. I also add txt/rtf notes that condense topics for quick reference and other types of files such as images and spreadsheets.
The database will also include sections that provide a dashboard (e.g. actionable trades, current news that I’m following - basically anything that I am currently working on), reference articles (those that don’t become stale, hence I want them available when needed - most other files in the database have a relatively short shelf life), a glossery of terms (e.g. AFFO vs FFO, BDCs, REITs and rules that goven them) - yes these are reference articles/notes, but I prefer to have them in their own folder/subfolder). Hopefully you get the idea.
I already have these files in Finder, used in previous attempts at organizing. I have used tags with other apps to help filter searches, like the ticker symbols for companies mentioned in articles (e.g. $ibm, $ge, $aapl) and sectors (e.g. %utilities, %tech). Other tag sets have been used (e.g. /reits, /bdc; /fed, /inflation). These tags were defined in TheBrain, and prior to that, in other apps, but I haven’t used them in Devonthink, since I didn’t use DTPO’s See Also.
My hope is to use DTPO to search for articles given a particular topic, like investing in $csco at the current time. I would want to find recent articles on Cisco as well as general articles on the tech sector and reports on the current market and sector cycle (overvalued, undervalued, …).
So I’d like to rely on DTPO using more of the underpinnings to help its AI do a lot of the work. I’m thinking of defining a few main folders for storing articles, when I index them to DTPO - I have a design that I don’t want to waste time explaining that requires all files to be indexed. Without a cumbersome folder hierarchy, it will be much simpler to acquire the files and sort them to the right folder. Hazel might be used here, as I use it for the financial db. I then rely on this “black box”, DPTO, to get the articles I want without my traversing a folder hierarchy to find them manually. (My design will rely an another app to provide a visual way of finding files, similar to TheBrain. So let’s not worry about that issue here.)
So here are my questions -
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Do I use tags for things like tickers, or do I use groups (where groups are not excluded from taging - something the forum article referred to above gets into). This certainly implies the group structure in DTPO can be more complex than the folder structure in Finder. Using group tags are needed for See Also, so using standard tags may not be wise.
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The groups in DTPO - any suggestions as to what they should represent? Some of them depend on the answer to the first question. I could have a “Sector” group with a subgroup for each sector, e.g. “%tech”, and replicate articles to another group hierarchy for each ticker (“Tickers” > “$csco”). Another hierarchy might list subtopics such as “Economic cycle” and “Rate sensitivity” and articles here may also be replicated to multiple ticker groups and sector groups if appropriate. But now I’m seeing a possibility of quickly expanding “other group” hierarchies. So…
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Would standard tags also be useful in addition to tag groups on tickers and sectors, when more and more relationships develop? (As long as the AI would not be expected to search for these tags when using See Also.)
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And speaking of a short shelf life for most articles, I’ve used TheBrain’s calendar to set a review date with alert to determine whether to delete the file or not. Any ideas on implementing this in DTPO?
And distilling all this, does it come down to using group tags instead of standard tags for anything that I want included in a See Also search, everything else can be a standard tag that I can do a simple search on (this assumes I don’t exclude groups from tagging)?
, yes - you could have an “Inbox” in your filesystem and index it. Then you could sort and move stuff in the database as you see fit.
