Use XML if your data is a lot more nested and complicated than this.

In this particular case I would suggest using JSON (if you cannot use relational databases as you have mentioned yourself).

Use XML if your data is a lot more nested and complicated than this.

In this particular case I would suggest using JSON (if you cannot use relational databases as you have mentioned yourself).

As for learning JSON it is very simple. There is nothing to it but learning the structure. Once you got the structure down you can pretty much create any type of data you want.

Here are some references to get started with JSON:

1. http://www.w3schools.com/json/

2. http://json.org/

3. https://code.google.com/p/json-simple/wiki/EncodingExamples