I am currently making an educational app that will need to have alot of text . I was wondering if reading from an xml file with the data use less memory than creating various strings of populating numerous textviews .I would like the app to be as small as possible like the physics solver app which has tons of text with images and is still 4mb large .If not, how can I put alot of text and still keep my app small?
Since you are asking about the "footprint" of the app (size of the APK - not size in memory necessarily), then things are little different.
First, when you say "XML" I assume you mean the Android "values" XML for storing Strings. Random XML depends on the XMLNS (the NameSpace) and attributes, etc. It can bloat fast.
For Android res XML files, the compiler will create a static reference to each String in the "R" file (resources) that you will later reference using "R.string.myString". This adds to the footprint, but only minimally.
Second, in bytecode static Strings will not have that reference, but they do have a "enumerated and indexed constant pools" as described in the docs here: https://source.android.com/devices/tech/dalvik/dalvik-bytecode.html
So either way you end up with a static reference to the String. Once in memory, they will essentially all be treated the same. For XML, the Resources object will getString which creates a CharSequence. For static variables, it might be a bit faster because the bytecode identifies it as a java.lang.String and instantiates it that way. But performance for either of these will be more dependent on platform implementations, thread and core queuing and other things that have nothing to do with you code - because both are really, really fast.
Also, you should consider that either of these solutions will allow a very large amount of text to be stored - most books contain about 400,000 - 500,000 characters (https://www.quora.com/How-many-characters-of-text-letters-are-in-an-average-book). So most of your footprint will come from compiling your java project (framework) and then images, if you choose to have them. A 500kb text string is a book. A 500kb image is one semi-decent image. (When they say a picture is worth a thousand words - in software, it's more like a hundred thousand or more :) ).
Well, using xml means less space but slower loading of the app, using Strings means a little more ram usage but Faster loading. Meaning if you launch the app it might delay with the xml for a second or two, but with Strings it will load with almost no delay. I would say xml, it means a little more mb but it also means less phone ram meaning it could run on any phone.
No, XML takes up more space both in memory and disk space. However, if you have XML file you don't have to read the whole thing either.
If you have a large data set, and you're worried about space for the app, I would have the data as a set of SQL database creation scripts and SQL inserts and then compress it and store it as part of your app.
Then on initial load you can extract it and load it up in the SQLLite so you can do lookups and release the data from memory when you're no longer using it.
I want to give backup facility in my android application. So for that purpose i don't know which which format will be suitable. I am thinking either XML or CSV. Please tell me which is efficient.
It's my opinion that you're probably better off using JSON, as it has many great advantages as listed below and given your data, wont be considerably larger than CSV or Binary.
Take a look at this post for details on how to implement it:
How to parse JSON in Android
The following is a general breakdown of the different data format options:
XML
This format is the least efficient (file size and time to parse), but comes with the advantage that it can be easily debugged or modified/read by a person. In general, use this if you are going to be reading the content, displaying it in some other program or the file will be small enough that it's size and processing disadvantages don't have a significant effect.
JSON
More concise than XML, while still maintaining it's human readability. It's syntax isn't quite as simple as XML but it's still very simple. I would recommend this over XML.
CSV
This format is much more efficient than XML, but is prone to errors if modified manually and can be very hard to read. You will likely require special care in dealing with the delimiting character so you'll want to find yourself a simple CSV library. It's disadvantages are that although
Binary
These formats will be read/written to a file as bytes. They are structured in such a way that only your specific application/reader will know how how the bytes are structured. This format is the most concise and has the best read/write performance, but of course, it's practically impossible to modify or read.
Edit: Also worth considering is your ability to modify the format of the data, for the purposes of supporting future version changes. Using JSON or XML allows you to easily add new fields or ignore existing ones and so can be easier to maintain backwards compatibility for existing applications without breaking their functionality. A similar solution for CSV or Binary would require that you store and check the data format version number with the files, and then manually switch between loaders in code.
I'd go (and I use them in my apps) for CSV files, since the data are crude and concise (i.e.: small file size and fast to read/write).
I won't choose XML files, which put a lot of garbage in the file, bloating them ridicolously.
I have lots of large strings which I will use only in two places (2 methods). I could declare them globally in the class, but worried about the memory and dynamic memory allocation slowing down the app.
Even though I declare in strings.xml, I would have to load them using getResources().getString() Would declaring them in strings.xml make anything better? memory or speed.
I am not worried about localization.
In my opinion keeping the strings is strings.xml is a better option
1) As you will practically save a number of String objects which you would have created during runtime.
2) Easy to manage all strings at one place.
3) its better to allocate resources at compile time rather than runtime.
The main thing in a developer's life is not how well he writes a code but how well he maintains a code so that more people can work on the same
Keeping all strings in strings.xml is a better option to keep them in the same file and also editing/modification of these strings will be easier.
Strings.xml is more maintainable and best practice,however if the only thing in the world you care about is efficiency and speed hard code it. There is no correct answer.I hope the string isn't your company name and they get bought out for example.
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I really like Xml for saving data, but when does sqlite/database become the better option? eg, when the xml has more than x items or is greater than y MB?
I am coding an rss reader and I believe I made the wrong choice in using xml over a sqlite database to store a cache of all the feeds items. There are some feeds which have an xml file of ~1mb after a month, another has over 700 items, while most only have ~30 items and are ~50kb in size after a several months.
I currently have no plans to implement a cap because I like to be able to search through everything.
So, my questions are:
When is the overhead of sqlite/databases justified over using xml?
Are the few large xml files justification enough for the database when there are a lot of small ones, though even the small ones will grow over time? (a long long time)
updated (more info)
Every time a feed is selected in the GUI I reload all the items from that feeds xml file.
I also need to modify the read/unread status which seems really hacky when I loop through all nodes in the xml to find the item and then set it to read/unread.
Man do I have experience with this. I work on a project where we originally stored all of our data using XML, then moved to SQLite. There are many pros and cons to each technology, but it was performance that caused the switchover. Here is what we observed.
For small databases (a few meg or smaller), XML was much faster, and easier to deal with. Our data was naturally in a tree format, which made XML much more attractive, and XPath allowed us to do many queries in one simple line rather than having to walk down an ancestry tree.
We were programming in a Win32 environment, and used the standard Microsoft DOM library. We would load all the data into memory, parse it into a DOM tree and search, add, modify on the in memory copy. We would periodically save the data, and needed to rotate copies in case the machine crashed in the middle of a write.
We also needed to build up some "indexes" by hand using C++ tree maps. This, of course would be trivial to do with SQL.
Note that the size of the data on the filesystem was a factor of 2-4 smaller than the "in memory" DOM tree.
By the time the data got to 10M-100M size, we started to have real problems. Interestingly enough, at all data sizes, XML processing was much faster than SQLite turned out to be (because it was in memory, not on the hard drive)! The problem was actually twofold- first, loadup time really started to get long. We would need to wait a minute or so before the data was in memory and the maps were built. Of course once loaded the program was very fast. The second problem was that all of this memory was tied up all the time. Systems with only a few hundred meg would be unresponsive in other apps even though we ran very fast.
We actually looking into using a filesystem based XML database. There are a couple open sourced versions XML databases, we tried them. I have never tried to use a commercial XML database, so I can't comment on them. Unfortunately, we could never get the XML databases to work well at all. Even the act of populating the database with hundreds of meg of XML took hours.... Perhaps we were using it incorrectly. Another problem was that these databases were pretty heavyweight. They required Java and had full client server architecture. We gave up on this idea.
We found SQLite then. It solved our problems, but at a price. When we initially plugged SQLite in, the memory and load time problems were gone. Unfortunately, since all processing was now done on the harddrive, the background processing load went way up. While earlier we never even noticed the CPU load, now the processor usage was way up. We needed to optimize the code, and still needed to keep some data in memory. We also needed to rewrite many simple XPath queries as complicated multiquery algorithms.
So here is a summary of what we learned.
For tree data, XML is much easier to query and modify using XPath.
For small datasets (less than 10M), XML blew away SQLite in performance.
For large datasets (greater than 10M-100M), XML load time and memory usage became a big problem, to the point that some computers become unusable.
We couldn't get any opensource XML database to fix the problems associated with large datasets.
SQLite doesn't have the memory problems of XML DOM, but it is generally slower in processing the data (it is on the hard drive, not in memory). (note- SQLite tables can be stored in memory, perhaps this would make it as fast.... We didn't try this because we wanted to get the data out of memory.)
Storing and querying tree data in a table is not enjoyable. However, managing transactions and indexing partially makes up for it.
I basically agree with Mitchel, that this can be highly specific depending on what are you going to do with XML and SQLite. For your case (cache), it seems to me that using SQLite (or other embedded databases) makes more sense.
First I don't really think that SQLite will need more overhead than XML. And I mean both development time overhead and runtime overhead. Only problem is that you have a dependence on SQLite library. But since you would need some library for XML anyway it doesn't matter (I assume project is in C/C++).
Advantages of SQLite over XML:
everything in one file,
performance loss is lower than XML as cache gets bigger,
you can keep feed metadata separate from cache itself (other table), but accessible in the same way,
SQL is probably easier to work with than XPath for most people.
Disadvantages of SQLite:
can be problematic with multiple processes accessing same database (probably not your case),
you should know at least basic SQL. Unless there will be hundreds of thousands of items in cache, I don't think you will need to optimize it much,
maybe in some way it can be more dangerous from security standpoint (SQL injection). On the other hand, you are not coding web app, so this should not happen.
Other things are on par for both solutions probably.
To sum it up, answers to your questions respectively:
You will not know, unless you test your specific application with both back ends. Otherwise it's always just a guess. Basic support for both caches should not be a problem to code. Then benchmark and compare.
Because of the way XML files are organized, SQLite searches should always be faster (barring some corner cases where it doesn't matter anyway because it's blazingly fast). Speeding up searches in XML would require index database anyway, in your case that would mean having cache for cache, not a particularly good idea. But with SQLite you can have indexing as part of database.
Don't forget that you have a great database at your fingertips: the filesystem!
Lots of programmers forget that a decent directory-file structure is/has:
It's fast as hell
It's portable
It has a tiny runtime footprint
People are talking about splitting up XML files into multiple XML files... I would consider splitting your XML into multiple directories and multiple plaintext files.
Give it a go. It's refreshingly fast.
Use XML for data that the
application should know -
configuration, logging and what not.
Use databases(oracle, SQL server etc) for data that the user
interacts with directly or
indirectly - real data
Use SQLite if the user data is more
of a serialized collection - like
huge list of files and their content
or collection of email items etc.
SQLite is good at that.
Depends on the kind and the size of the data.
I wouldn't use XML for storing RSS items. A feed reader makes constant updates as it receives data.
With XML, you need to load the data from file first, parse it, then store it for easy search/retrieval/update. Sounds like a database...
Also, what happens if your application crashes? if you use XML, what state is the data in the XML file versus the data in memory. At least with SQLite you get atomicity, so you are assured that your application will start with the same state as when the last database write was made.
XML is best used as an interchange format when you need to move data from your application to somewhere else or share information between applications. A database should be the preferred method of storage for almost any size application.
When should XML be used for data persistence instead of a database? Almost never. XML is a data transport language. It is slow to parse and awkward to query. Parse the XML (don't shred it!) and convert the resulting data into domain objects. Then persist the domain objects. A major advantage of a database for persistence is SQL which means unstructured queries and access to common tools and optimization techniques.
I have made the switch to SQLite and I feel much better knowing it's in a database.
There are a lot of other benefits from this:
Adding new items is really simple
Sorting by multiple columns
Removing duplicates with a unique index
I've created 2 views, one for unread items and one for all items, not sure if this is the best use of views, but I really wanted to try using them.
I also benchmarked the xml vs sqlite using the StopWatch class, and the sqlite is faster, although it could just be that my way of parsing xml files wasn't the fastest method.
Small # items and size (25 items, 30kb)
~1.5 ms sqlite
~8.0 ms xml
Large # of items (700 items, 350kb)
~20 ms sqlite
~25 ms xml
Large file size (850 items, 1024kb)
~45 ms sqlite
~60 ms xml
To me it really depends on what you are doing with them, how many users/processes need access to them at the same time etc.
I work with large XML files all the time, but they are single process, import style items, that multi-user, or performance are not really needs.
SO really it is a balance.
If any time you will need to scale, use databases.
XML is good for storing data which is not completely structured and you typically want to exchange it with another application. I prefer to use a SQL database for data. XML is error prone as you can cause subtle errors due to typos or ommissions in the data itself. Some open source application frameworks use too many xml files for configuration, data, etc. I prefer to have it in SQL.
Since you ask for a rule of thumb, I would say that use XML based application data, configuration, etc if you are going to set it up once and not access/search it much. For active searches and updations, its best to go with SQL.
For example, a web server stores application data in a XML file and you dont really need to perform complex search, update the file. The web server starts, reads the xml file and thats that. So XML is perfect here. Suppose you use a framework like Struts. You need to use XML and the action configurations dont change much once the application is developed and deployed. So again, the XML file is a good way. Now if your Struts developed application allows extensive searches and updations, deletions, then SQL is the optimal way.
Offcourse, you will surely meet one or two developers in your organisation who will chant XML or SQL only and proclaim XML or SQL as the only way to go. Beware of such folks and do what 'feels' right for your application. Dont just follow a 'technology religion'.
Think of things like how often you need to update the data, how often you need to search the data. Then you will have your answer on what to use - XML or SQL.
I agree with #Bradley.
XML is very slow and not particularly useful as a storage format. Why bother? Will you be editing the data by hand using a text editor? If so, XML still isn't a very convenient format compared to something like YAML. With something like SQlite, queries are easier to write, and there's a well defined API for getting your data in and out.
XML is fine if you need to send data around between programs. But in the name of efficiency, you should probably produce the XML at sending time, and parse it into "real data" at receive time.
All the above means that your question about "when the overhead of a database is justified" is kind of moot. XML has a way higher overhead, all the time, than SQlite does. (Full-on databases like MSSQL are heavier, especially in administrative overhead, but that's a totally different question.)
XML can be stored as text and as a binary file format.
If your primary goal is to let a computer read / write a file format effeciently you should work with a binary file format.
Databases are an easy to use way of storing and maintaining data.
They are not the fastest way to store data that is a binary file format.
What can speed things up is using an in memory database / database type. Sqlite has this option.
And this sounds like the best way to do it for you.
My opinion is that you should use SQLite (or another appropriate embedded database) anytime you don't need a pure-text file format. Note, this is a pretty big exception. There are a lot of scenarios that require, or are benefited by, pure-text file formats.
As far as overhead goes, SQLite compiles to something like 250 k with normal flags. Many XML parsing libraries are larger than SQLite. You get no concurrency gains using XML. The SQLite binary file format is going to support much more efficient writes (largely because you can't append to the end of a well-formatted XML file). And even reading data, most of which I assume is fairly random access, is going to be faster using SQLite.
And to top it all off, you get access to the benefits of SQL like transactions and indexes.
Edit: Forgot to mention. One benefit of SQLite (as opposed to many databases) is that it allows any type in any row in any column. Basically, with SQLite you get the same freedom you have with XML in terms of datatypes. This also means that you don't have to worry about putting limits on text columns.
You should note that many large Relational DBs (Oracle and SQLServer) have XML datatypes to store data within a database and use XPath within the SQL statement to gain access to that data.
Also, there are native XML databases which work very much like SQLite in the sense they are one binary file holding a collection of documents (which could roughly be a table) then you can either XPath/XQuery on a single document or the whole collection. So with an XML database you can do things like store the days data as a separate XML document in the collection... so you just need to use that one document when your dealing with the data for today. But write an XQuery to figure out historical data on the collection of documents for that person. Slick.
I've used Berkeley XMLDB (now backed by Oracle). There are others if you search google for "Native XML Database". I've not seen a performance problem with storing/retrieving data in this manner.
XQuery is a different beast (but well worth learning), however you may be able to just use the XPaths you currently use with slight modifications.
A database is great as part of your program. If quering the data is part of your business logic.
XML is best as a file format, especially if you data format is:
1, Hierarchal
2, Likely to change in the future in ways you can't guess
3, The data is going to live longer than the program
I say it's not a matter of data size, but of data type. If your data is structured, use a relational database. If your data is semi-structured, use XML or - if the data amounts really grow too large - an XML database.
If your searching go with a db. You could split the xml files up into directories to ease seeking, but the managerial overhead easily gets quite heavy. You also get a lot more than just performance with a sql db...