Arguments for and against the Android SQLite usage

Question

I am unsure if I should use or not Android SQLite database with my Android program.

The program has several tables, and I have operations for quering, updating and displaying these tables. However the total amount of data is not very large (maybe tens of rows at most).

I was told by some people that I should not use databases any more as storing everything into flat files is easier to implement, the finished implementation is easier to maintain and the database engine can be replaced by collection framework that stores pre-loaded flat files. These people have some weight in decision making so I need argumentation if I still want to use the database.

Would it be possible to get argumentation when Android SQLite database should and when it should not be used?

Answer 1

The concept of a ContentProvider abstracts away from the actual technique used to persist your data. It allows you to nicely separate the implementation of your data source and the visualization of this data. In this respect, I don't think that easiness of implementation is a good argument for or against SQLite. If you use Cursors, you probably will use a ContentProvider anyway.

If you perform a lot of (complext) queries, the query performance might be an argument in favor of SQLite since this is what is is built for. Moreover, it seems much easier to debug an SQL database than a flat file.