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First time posting and first time working on Android, so go easy if I am breaking any rules :)

Anyways, I just got into making an Android app and I'm trying to create a simple trivia game. I plan to have many questions (hopefully about 5000+ questions) made. No data manipulation made, just straight up reading the questions and presenting it to the user. I am now faced with the dilema in how to store the questions.

I have two choices:

1.) Bundle the questions with the app: Possibly store the information in SQLite. Originally, for demo purposes, I placed the questions in an XML file, but I quickly realized how inefficient it will be once the questions start piling up. First, I am concerned if opening up such a huge XML file would suck up Android's memory. Secondly, I am worried how large the app would be if it contains 5000+ questions. I read here about the pros of XML vs SQLite. In that example, the user has 70,000 entries so maybe my 5,000 questions would be enough?

OR

2.) Host the questions on a server: I believe the upside is the app wouldn't need to be bundled with a vast amount of questions and wouldn't need to worry about the logic of opening and assembling the questions. It would just hit a PHP page and depending on the parameters sent, the PHP page would return the questions in XML format. The downside is the user would need to be online (to retrieve the questions) in order to play the game and my server would need to be up and running 24/7.

Has anyone encountered this design issue of how and where to store vast amount of data in an Android app?

Thanks, any help would be much appreciated!

Community
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RaKku
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    I think the opposite should also be mentioned: NOT breaking any rules (especially on your first question). +1 for a clear, well written and formatted question that shows research effort and thought. Welcome to StackOverflow. :) –  Sep 21 '11 at 02:59

2 Answers2

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From a marketing perspective, I think the right approach is #1. Just looking at the top app list, it's filled with apps that work offline. I don't know why most people fail to mention this one important criteria when they talk about marketing apps... especially in Android, where lots of people don't have a data plan. Plus, a trivia app sounds like something someone would probably use during a commute in a train as opposed to something like Facebook Chat that they'd use when they're online.

From a technical perspective, storing 5000+ questions really won't take a huge amount of space. There's this app called "MyFitnessPal". It stores maybe over 30,000 foods in a SQlite database, with nutritional information. So don't overestimate how much space it will take.

The advantage of going with #2 is if the questions or answers change often, you might want to go with that approach.

Henley
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  • Yeah, that's EXACTLY what I was thinking of - about the user not being able to play the game online. So I was checking the size of the XML with a thousand questions and you were right, it is pretty small. I am actually thinking of ditching the whole database approach since Android seems to do a good job in opening the XML file (at least with a thousand entries) and parsing through the information without it complaining - which I was afraid of before. – RaKku Sep 24 '11 at 02:40
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I think that the best option for you is to store the questions in SQLite.This way the users can have access to your game even if they are offline,which is one of the important things as Hisoka mentioned. So I think you should try using SQLite.

Android-Droid
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