Inside Symbian SQL: A Mobile Developer's Guide to SQLite

Chapter 1. Introduction

This book has been long in the making and written by a fairly large and diverse group of authors. The common cause is supporting Symbian developers in creating new phones, database-driven applications, or porting DBMS-based application code to use Symbian SQL.

In order to understand just how important this cause is, we only need to consider the massive growth of file storage available on today's mobile devices. Just a few years ago, storage space was measured in megabytes and even desktops were shipping with 20 GB hard disks. Modern media devices are unlikely to succeed without gigabytes of storage. The expansion shows no signs of slowing as users become content creators as much as content consumers. With the ability to store thousands of songs, photos or videos on phones and the corresponding need to catalog them, it is clear that a relational database is a necessary component of a future-proof, scalable, mobile operating system.

Applications such as media management, as essential as they are, only scratch the surface of what mobile databases are about. Relational databases are an enabling technology, making possible things that we cannot always anticipate. A great example is the Colombo Search service discussed in Section 9.2 – a 'desktop' search API for Symbian that allows searching contacts, calendar, messaging, bookmarks, notes, and more, through a single, simple API.

Where Should You Start?

In writing this book, we envisage two major groups of readers – ...