So I\'m getting really confused on how to do this whole thing and I was hoping someone could break it down for me a little bit.
I have a service that should always
In the same application, services and activities can access the same Sqlite database. I'd suggest using a sqlite db. For simplicity, set up your service connection as a local, so you don't need the AIDL interfaces and inter-process communication stuff.
From a service, to notify the user, use the NotificationManager. You can pass a serializable object from your service to an intent, then to the activity that gets started, but I'd suggest passing a db ID instead.
We have built a new Android ORM tool that you can use for this. It includes prototype Activity and Service classes that you can use to build your app. I don't have an example app yet that uses the service, but I'll code that one next and get it up ASAP.
See...
http://ormlite.com/
And my blog...
http://touchlabblog.tumblr.com/
I currently do some pretty heavy db stuff in the app I'm working on. A service checks with a server for updates, and essentially does what you're looking to do. Its all pretty simple stuff.