With any platform, there are multiple ways to access data, from built-in facilities to homegrown APIs. Android is no different, so while you can write your own way to load data from some arbitrary data source, unless you have very particular requirements, there is often no need, as Android has a system built in--the ContentProvider.
The Android documentation will tell you that a content provider manages access to a central repository of data, and that it offers a consistent, standard interface to data that also handles inter-process communication and secure data access. If you intend to expose your application's data to external sources (either for read or write), ContentProvider is a great way to go. However, if you don't ...
