Cocoa Programming for OS X: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide

Choosing a Cocoa Persistence Technology

Core Data is perhaps the most polarizing of the Cocoa frameworks. It has a long history and there is a lot we simply do not have time to cover here – entire books have been written on Core Data! Core Data is very sophisticated about handling data, using a mechanism called faulting to only load fetched objects when needed. It handles a great deal of non-trivial work for you: tracking changes, helping to manage schema versions, and so forth. It would take you a long, long time to duplicate what it offers.

At the same time, even as the Cocoa community has gathered more understanding of Core Data over the years, it is still a black box. If you encounter a performance problem it can be very ...