Adobe® AIR™ Bible

Chapter 11. SQLite Databases

One of the most powerful new tools introduced with the AIR API is the addition of local SQLite databases. Now you can store the data your application needs in a compact and quickly accessible format for later use, offline use, or transfer between computers. If you are building an application that is going to need its own file format or is going to use even a moderate amount of data, you probably want to use SQLite.

This chapter provides you with a quick introduction to SQLite itself, and then helps you dive straight into using it. You don't have any configuration or setup to worry about, so all you really need to understand is a little bit of SQL, a few new classes, and a couple of new data types. By the end of this chapter, you should be able to print up new business cards to add "DBA" to the end of your title.

Introducing SQLite

SQLite is an open-source relational database. It was released publicly in 2000 and has garnered a large community of supporters and users. You can trust it. It really is the perfect database engine for a desktop application, and one that is incredibly easy to use.

The stated goal of the SQLite development community is to make the database simple. This means that they have left some features of other database engines out in the cold; if you're an Oracle administrator, you may not be amused. For most of us though, this is fantastic — with simplicity comes stability, so SQLite is an engine you can use and an engine you can depend ...