Book Image

Android Database Programming

By : Jason Wei
Book Image

Android Database Programming

By: Jason Wei

Overview of this book

<p>We live in an increasingly data-centric and data-driven world. On top of that we live in a very mobile-centric world with the rise of Android smart phones and tablet devices and the surge in demand for the Android platform. Along with the demand for more data, there is a demand for efficient, "snappy" applications, and so developers need to have a strong understanding of when different data storage methods are appropriate and when they are not.</p> <p>Mastering how to use these two fields to successfully create a powerful application will help you boost your knowledge and skills in this area.</p> <p>"Android Database Programming" is designed to help developers create and design data-centric mobile applications on Google’s Android platform. As the world goes increasingly mobile and as consumers’ demand for data-centric applications rises, knowing how to combine the two effectively will become an increasingly important asset to have as a developer. The book starts by looking at the various local data storage methods on Android, and finishes off by examining external databases and ways you can utilize them from within an Android application.</p> <p>This book starts by looking at local data storage methods, focusing on writing SQLite databases for your application and also looking at ways to bind these databases to the user interface. The book, through its practical approach, strives to teach you by examples. Each chapter focuses on flushing out high level design concepts, before drilling down into different code examples.&nbsp;</p> <p>As you continue you will look at external databases, primarily Google’s App Engine platform, and pull things together by helping you understand how you can request, cache, and display this data. The book then teaches the ways and techniques to utilize such external databases from within your application.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Android Database Programming
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Summary


In this chapter, we started by focusing on the Android OS and by looking at what types of query methods are at your disposal. We saw that there are three well-known ways to interact with the SQLite database, some more 'convenient' than the others, and some more flexible and powerful than the others.

However, we also saw that though each method had its pros and cons, all three query methods could ultimately perform the same kinds of queries, just using different sets of syntax or using different sets of parameters. This is when we moved away from the methods themselves and focused more on the query itself, starting with simple queries, which ranged from the most basic SELECT queries to more involved queries that allowed you to specify specific columns and rows. And later, we talked about more advanced queries, which ranged from ORDERBY and GROUPBY queries to the most complex and involved JOIN statements.

And lastly, being the curious and performance-minded programmers that we are, we...