Develop Reference

How do you choose your database type based on the criteria (SQL, JSON, etc.) and how do you ensure its integrity?

Implementing and managing remote or cloud databases in Android Applications is new to me. I am currently making an app that would take in thousands of "entries" to a form, think of it as an attendance app. Right now I've decided to use JSON as my database type and Parse as my BaaS. I need some tips on my decision.
I don't actually see JSON suitable for this because it is a "text" file that can easily be modified or if I somehow accidentally append an extra bracket it would render the whole database corrupt whereas SQL use queries like INSERT which I think is more secure. I just picked JSON because it works well with Parse. Do you think this is a good idea?
Another is what if the JSON file will accumulate tens of thousands of entries, how do you manage this huge database? Do you split it into several files (eg. every 1k entries make another JSON file) or is it enough to just dump all the data in that one JSON database file?
When using BaaS do you just sync the data in that server or do you also make backups of some sort (I don't really know how to put this)?
Thanks in advance!

JSON is not a database, but a data interchange format. You can have a database that uses JSON for communication, for internal representation, etc. but that does not make JSON a database in itself.
Parse itself manages the organization of the data. You communicate using JSON but don't have to care about how it's stored, updated, etc. internally.
So in your app, you should use SQLite for storing such amounts of information, or, depending on the app, just send it to the Parse server and execute the queries against it. You can see how it's done in the Parse Android documentation.

Data to Android app from web server

My app pulls data from the web server. The results are given to a ListView.
Question 1: In what format should I transmit data to minimize data usage ?
Question 2: Should I use a SqlLite database to store the results from the server and feed it to the ListView or can I load it a few (say 100) values to the an ArrayList and set it as the data source for the ListView for a better performance ?

Question 1: In what format should I transmit data to minimize data usage ?
Answer 1: Its depends on your server side data format. If it is in Xml format then you have to
use xml parsing. If its in Json format then you have to use JSON parsing. I suggest to you use JSOn parsing.
Question 2: Should I use a SqlLite database to store the results from the server and feed it to the ListView or can I load it a few (say 100) values to the an ArrayList and set it as the data source for the ListView for a better performance ?
Answer 2 : You can use HashMap arraylist to store your data and retrieve as easily from it. But if you have a bunch of data earlier said by you then you need to use SQLITE database. In which you have to store your all data in it. and after that retrieve from the Database.

Q1: you can use JSON or Xml for data transferring because these both are standards but JSON is widely used for data driven applications.
Q2: For Large data you can directly load data to list using lazy loading technique, or this is totally dependent on a person, if you store in database to use this data on multiple locations and for data storage, this depends on you

Data format
The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is widely used in transferring data over the net
Storage
That depends on what you're trying to do - if the data is only temporary in nature, what you're suggesting works. If it needs to be stored across application starts, you will need some kind of persistence. A database would be one way to do that.
Remember though, that if you place your data loading code in your activity's onCreate or onResume method (or anywhere in startup callbacks of the activity lifecycle), it will get loaded everytime your activity is created - even if the user just flipped the device. If the data takes long to load (which over the network can always be the case, even if it's just a few bytes), this can result in very bad user experience.
One way to deal with this would be using a custom Loader, which can exist separate from your activity and would be able to cache your previously loaded data.
Conceptually, doing this would require you to extend Loader, and override the onStartLoading method to begin loading your data from the network. You should probably also override onStopLoading and onCancelLoad to keep your app from needlessly shoveling data over the connection even if it's not wanted anymore.
Having done this, you would provide LoaderCallbacks (as shown in the link I gave you), and instead of creating a new CursorLoader in the onCreateLoader callback, create an instance of your own custom loader class.

Storing Json parsed in Android using GSON

I'm very new to Android and I'm currently working on Android app that will parse JSON from a Restful API and display some of the data in a list view. I've looked into using GSON for parsing as the JSON was quite complex. Now my main problem is figuring out how to store the data somewhere so the app doesn't need to reload itself every time the activity is clicked on. I've looked at few questions here but they all seem to point to JSON only not GSON. Could anyone recommend an efficient way of doing this?
Thanks

if you want to store the data permanent it's the best way to insert your deserialized objects into a sqlite database or store them local to the disk as a file.
if your intention is to load the data for each startup, it's easier. just put your object into a public static object. so you can check if the object is not null or not. if it's null you have to load the data.
another opportunity is using the SharedPreferences.

Parsed Json (jackson) to objects data saving

To get Data for my application, I parse a Json file, with Jackson, to (lists of) custom Objects. When I start my app, I check if there is a new Json file available and ask the user if they want to download it, else I use the "old" Json file. But every time I start my app I parse the Json. Then I use the Application Class to save my list of objects an go to my data when I want, most of the time I only need one object.
From the huge list, with multiple layer nested object, I create a simple "flat" arraylist of custom objects in which I put only the data I need to create listviews (name, id, second text and url of picture). When something is clicked, i use the id to get all the data.
Parsing this whole Json file every time is pretty time consuming and makes the startup time of my application long. Ofcourse, this sucks.
And having this huge list of custom objects saved in Application Class fills a lot of memory of my device, and sometimes after some use the class gets killed, and I need to reparse again.
Is there a way I don't need to reparse all my data?
I hoped for a process like this:
new Json file
first time parse total JSON to list of multilayered custom objects
create simple list for listviews
delete/clear the big list
some clever way to get only one of the giant items, without keeping the whole list in my memory. (maybe something with Jackson).
on destroying of the application maybe save the simple list, i read something about parceable or serializable?
Anyone knows how to achieve this?
Or has an other awesome idea?

Jackson has a streaming api. Also you can parse the json in a AsyncTask (in the background) and update your user interface once the new data is ready

I'd probably store the data in a SQLite database, in line with how the Android platform was designed.

As an alternative to streaming Jackson API (which is very fast, but still has to scan through most of the content), perhaps you could just save things in different files, one per entry? Or, if there is a way to group things, in multiple files each having some subset?
Of course, if you really have tons of entries, use of SQLite as Bruce suggested makes lots of sense.

Caching Objects parsed from XML in Android

I have an Android application which talks to a public Data-API by calling URLs. The API returns XML which describes search results or detailed Data of a particular dataset.
In my Application i retrieve this data and parse it to Java Objects to display them in a ListView for example.
edit: Just to make it clearer: In my Application you can search for music Artists and get their whole discographic information. I Retrieve the list of Releases and display them in a ListView. (No problem right here, because the results of the same search request can change any minute i have to retrieve this data everytime a search request is issued).
Now i have a list with all the LPs the Beatles produced (for example). I can then click one particular LP and view the Details such as the Release Year and the Tracklist.
What i want to cache is the Details data and i'm currently thinking of which is the best way to do this. I thought of:
Retrieving the XML data once and store the XML Data in the SQLite Database (that would imply, that i have to parse the data everytime i want to access it again).
Retrieving the XML data once, parsing it once and somehow store the serialized JavaObject into the SQLite Database as ByteStream. (so all the time consuming work would be done just once).
What do you think is the best version or is there maybe another better way to achieve caching the results?

serializing an object would be quick solution but that could not be effective solution. Every a time you need to load entire object, while in this case if you are storing your data set into database then, using cursor/queries data handling will be smoother.
CursorAdapter will allow you to plug database cursor directly to list in GUI. I would suggest you to use database approach.