Enterprise Android: Programming Android Database Applications for the Enterprise

Chapter 9

Generic Data Synchronization: Project Migrate and the WebData API

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Understanding the common problems that Android developers encounter when interacting with network data
• Solving common mobile data problems in a generic way with project Migrate and the WebData API
• Looking at the WebData protocol in detail
• Noting advantages of a WebData API–based system

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

Please note that all the code examples in this chapter are available at https://github.com/wileyenterpriseandroid/Examples.git and as a part of the book’s code download at www.wrox.com on the Download Code tab.

As you’ve read in this book, mobile developers face similar problems on many platforms when writing applications that use network services to store data. Developers getting started with Android face problems associated with network data loading right off the bat. A typical first application for many developers will include a list of items loaded from a network service. The items will use thumbnails that require lazy loading. Developers with a bit more experience will start to use more sophisticated techniques like paging schemes that avoid the need to load all the results of a query over the network — large queries are loaded in pieces. Developers will also need a RESTful protocol for communicating with a backend service, and that protocol is likely to need synchronization support to deal with multiple hosts changing the same state. Developers often ...