gobjects, glists and arrays beginners question

[Kim Adil <ksadil bigpond net au>]

I have written a fairly comprehensive industrial display program, and 
would like to rewrite version 2 in a better way. In version 1 I used 
arrays of structs to manage various portions of the data, for example:

struct machine{
   gint machineNumber;
   gchar machineName[30];
   gchar model[30];
   gchar operator[30];
   gint activityNumber;
   gint activity[30];
   gint alarmLevel;

};
struct machine machineArray[100],ODBCmachineArray[100];

I would like to do a "better" job by using some type of dynamic memory 
management to make the application more flexible, ie able to handle a 
variable number of machines. My expertise is very limited in this area 
(sorry mechanical engineer trying to do software dev) and I would 
appreciate any advice on how to use gobject, glist, or any preferred 
approach for this sort of application.

Thanks,
Kim