how to decide between direct database access and content provider?

Question

I am writing an application that consists of business logic and UI parts. There is quite big amount of data to be stored and accessed/modified by both BL and UI. In most of

Answer 1

In the apps that I've written, I've found that once you get past the learning curve, implementing a ContentProvider is pretty easy.

Pros:

• No external dependencies.
• DB connection lifecycle is handled by the ContentProvider.
• Easily pass content URIs between Activities in an Intent.
• Simple background queries via CursorLoader (or roll your own).

Cons:

• Can be confusing if you don't have a good example handy.
• If you have an enterprise Java background, ORM might be more familiar.

When I was trying to figure out how to implement a ContentProvider, I poured over the example code in Google's I/O application. Before you make a decision, I would at least spend a day prototyping one so you can get first-hand experience of the tradeoffs.