Develop Reference

Database tool for Android other than SQLite?

I am new to Android programming and I have made a few simple apps which use SQLite to store user's data. Now I am working on a little more complex app in which I need to implement many-to-many relationship among the tables.
So basically, I have three layers (3 Tables) that would be connected to each other and I can't find a good tutorial or any documentation on how to do it. I've spent weeks on researching this. I also looked into realm-database but it's complicated for many-to-many table setup.
So is there any easier solution to this for a beginner? Or is there another tool that I can use to accomplish my task. Any suggestions would be helpful. Thank you :)

Your example isn't a many to many relationship. It's a one to many, each country can only exist in one continent and each state in only one country.
You can get the structure you want by adding a reference to the parent type's ID.
CREATE TABLE continent (
_id INTEGER NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
name TEXT NOT NULL
)
CREATE TABLE country (
_id INTEGER NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
continentId INTEGER NOT NULL,
name TEXT NOT NULL,
FOREIGN KEY continentId REFERENCES continent(_id)
)
CREATE TABLE state (
_id INTEGER NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
countryId INTEGER NOT NULL,
name TEXT NOT NULL,
FOREIGN KEY countryId REFERENCES country(_id)
)
To select all the countries on a continent, just ask SQL using the correct ID.
SELECT *
FROM country
WHERE continentId = ?
Or you can join them together.
SELECT *
FROM continent
JOIN country ON continent._id = country.continent
JOIN state ON country._id = state.countryId

You can do many-to-may relationships with SQLite. For the example shown you just need some XREF tables. For example (pseudocode):
Table CONTINENT(
ContinentID
,ContinentName
)
Table COUNTRY(
CountryID
,CountryName
)
Table CONTINENT_COUNTRY_XREF (
Continent_Country_XrefID
,ContinentID
,CountryID
)
Hope this helps.

Yes you can use Ultralite database from SAP. It supports joins as well.
More details here
http://scn.sap.com/community/developer-center/mobility-platform/blog/2012/08/23/how-to-open-an-ultralite-db-udb

To connect two tables in a many to many relationship, create a third table with three columns. The first column is just a standard is for the primary key. The other two columns are secondary keys into the two original tables. Googling " many to many relationship" will provide more details.

Does sqlite "insert or replace" work with AUTOINCREMENT primary key?

I have a database in which i have created one table with name "SectionDetails".
In this table i have set "id" as a primary key with AUTOINCREMENT property.And i am inserting my data into this table.
However, i came to the scenario where i need to check if record i am inserting is already present or not(if record is present then replace it with same values or skip it,And if record is not present then insert new one ).
But when i tried to insert record with same column values, it increases the primary key and insert the same row again instead of replacing.
So, my question is-
Does sqlite "insert or replace" works with AUTOINCREMENT primary key?
I am using following query:
insert or replace into SectionDetails(Name,Month,Title,Url)values('Deepak',"August","None","www.dd619.com")
here column "id" is not appearing because its a primary key with AUTOINCREMENT property.

You will need to add some unique constraints to your other columns to make this work and even then you will have your IDs change.
insert or replace is really an insert with on conflict replace conflict resolution strategy. That is, when the insert would violate some constraint, all conflicting rows are first deleted and the insert takes place only then. The autoincrement mechanism will then generate a new ID value for you.
For more information: http://www.sqlite.org/lang_conflict.html

Short answer: no it does not.
The "insert or replace" only works well when you also specify the primary key. With the autoincrement in a setup that you describe, this cannot work.
Probably the quickest way to do that is by creating a custom insert/update method for your use case.

SQLite CREATE table with an alias for ROWID

Looking at this answer I was trying to work out how to actually create a table with a column that is just an alias for ROWID. I would like to do this as some android classes require a unique column named '_id' but i dont want that col to be a PRIMARY KEY. I cant use AUTO_INCREMENT on the col that not a PK either, so I would just like _id to be an alias. I know I could do that in the query but thats not practical for my situation. Any pointers? Is this even possible?
Thanks :)
EDIT: really i just want to be able to have my own PK but also have an id field for CursorAdapters to work correctly etc
EDIT: Looking at Do i have to use _ID as a SQlite primary key? and does it have to be an INT? (Android Dev) it suggests to do it in the query if my PK is a number type also, but what if its a TEXT col that im using for my PK? (sort of thinking aloud here) - I guess i could copy CursorAdaptor and just getString instead of a long for the _id col (plus, pass the name of the col to use as the PK in to cursor adapter, get rid of _id!) OR just add a alias for the ROWID as _id in the SELECT, feels a bit hacky though...

You may have a primary key that is completely independent of SQLite's built-in rowid.
Every row of every SQLite table has a 64-bit signed integer key that uniquely identifies the row within its table. This integer is usually called the "rowid". The rowid value can be accessed using one of the special case-independent names "rowid", "oid", or "rowid" in place of a column name.
You may formulate your query so that the built-in rowid is called _id for the benefit of the CursorAdaptor by prepending the hidden rowid column to your results:
select _rowid_ as _id, ...
The rowid is unique, but need not be the primary key. You can make the primary key anything you like in the CREATE TABLE statement.

TBH, I don't think that this is really feasible. You are required to have that kind of PK column (even though with a lot of hacking you could create some kind of workaround).
I would rather suggest to have the _id column as a technical PK and have an additional column as logical PK i.e. just a freely defined column with a unique constraint. Your program logic should then be able to simply use the logical PK for all operations. Of course this would require you to use custom queries for find operations etc. but that is usually more fitting anyways.
hth..

Sqlite different column names, but with same values

Here is my current SQLite table:
CREATE TABLE formula (_id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,suggest_text_1 TEXT,formula TEXT,category TEXT);
I want to integrate search suggestions in an Android app, but I need a SUGGEST_COLUMN_INTENT_DATA_ID and I want my _id to represent it. But I also need a _id for the content provider. So is there a way where I could have SUGGEST_COLUMN_INTENT_DATA_ID and store the current and future values of _id in it? Would I use an alias?

Would I use an alias?
This is possible but it depends on your exact requirements. See my answer to this question to see if this applies to you. Android: column '_id' does not exist problem

Problem with inserting into android sqlite3 table that has composite primary key

I have a table with a composite primary key and I am having trouble inserting. The code used to create the table is:
CREATE TABLE ClassEvent (
EventName varchar(10) NOT NULL,
CourseId varchar(10) NOT NULL,
EventType varchar(20),
EventWeight number(3),
DueDate DATE NOT NULL,
FOREIGN KEY (CourseId) REFERENCES Courses(CourseId),
PRIMARY KEY (CourseId, EventName));
The problem I am having is when I want to insert records that have values that may not be unique for the columns CourseId or EventName, but are a unique combination of the 2.
for example, if I try to run the following 2 inserts:
INSERT INTO ClassEvent VALUES('Assignment 1','60-415','Assignment',10,'12/10/2010');
INSERT INTO ClassEvent VALUES('Project 1','60-415','Project',15,'5/12/2010');
I get the following error:
Error: columns CourseId, EventName are not unique.
and the second insert does not make it into the DB. Why does this error out? I thought that a composite primary key requires that the combination of both values are unique. In my above inserts, the values for the EventName column are different even though the values for CourseId are the same. Shouldn't this be seen as 2 unique combinations and thus 2 different primary keys?
My table needs to be able to hold several different events for each CourseId, but each Event must be unique for each Course. I need to be able to insert values into the table like:
EventName CourseId
Assignment 1 60-415
Project 1 60-415
Assignment2 60-415
Project 2 60-415
Assignment 1 60-367
Project 1 60-367
and so on. Can anyone tell me how I can get this to work? Why are these composite PK's not being seen as unique entries? Any help would be much appreciated.
Here is the java function I am using for the insert:
public void addNewClassEvent(ContentValues values) {
SQLiteDatabase db = openConnection();
db.insert("ClassEvent", null, values);
db.close();
}
Could this be causing the problem?

You can have a composite primary key in SQLite, but you
have to create the key when you create the table:
CREATE TABLE example1(
field1 FLOAT,
field2 TEXT,
PRIMARY KEY(field1, field2)
);
You cannot create the primary key after the fact using ALTER TABLE.
On the other hand, you can create a UNIQUE INDEX after the fact
which has essentially the same effect as a PRIMARY KEY:
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX pk_index ON "table1"("field1","field2");
I am not sure how you have created, the tables, and if you have added the primary index later, but grab the database to your desktop, and check out how works in a desktop environment.

You can't make combinations like that, but you don't need them. What is stopping you from just having a truly id column ?