We have loads of apps where we fetch data from remote web services as JSON and then use a parser to translate that into a Core-Data model.
For one of our app
I use SBJson to parse JSON to NSDictionaries then save them as .plist files using [dict writeToFile:saveFilePath atomically:YES]
. Loading is also just as simple NSMutableDictionary *dict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfFile:saveFilePath]
. Its fast, efficient and easy. No need for a database.