android Android Application Development Question

[Corey]

I am taking a class this semester and my group has to create an Android application that will get information from a database and display it within the app.

 

This is my first time ever messing with an android application, but someone in my group who has a little experience said that we would use JSON to get the information form the database onto the app. Well there is another suggestion of using an RSS feed that would send out the information instead of using JSON. Does anyone have experience with this type of technology?

 

Would it be easier to use JSON or RSS feed to display this type of information? Thanks

[Krayzie]

Pandora uses JSON. That's about all I know

[daredevil]

My friend says JSON. Sorry, never worked on it but my friend makes application for banking and all.. So he is good at it.

[rolf]

How do you access the database? Which database is it? Are you allowed to "attach" stuff to the server running the database or not?

 

JSON is used for getting information from the database and parse it to something other languages can use. It doesn't specify how it gets the data. RSS, JSON and -for my part- csv or your own implementation based on wind direction should all be sufficient, but the main question is how to get it into that format. If you search for "MySQL JSON" you see what you can get. As for choice, it depends on what you want to display. I prefer to use old standards (csv over xml for example), but all can do the same. If you have experience with neither, do JSON, seems promising

 

I've never developed for Android, but with an Android emulator and Eclipse it shouldn't be that hard (other than that Eclipse is hard). Getting the data shouldn't be that hard (depending on the application, how well the database is closed, etc). Parsing JSON inside the application is close to trivial.

[Corey]

How do you access the database? Which database is it? Are you allowed to "attach" stuff to the server running the database or not?

 

Well if we use the RSS feeds the database is already created and running on a linux server at my school. I'm not sure if we will have the ability to actually go in there and change stuff within the actual database, but if something needed to be installed on the server for it to work with our app our teacher would be able to do it.

 

If we went the JSON route a guy in my group said he was thinking about setting up a simple Windows Azure database for us to use (the database on the linux server is being used by other groups as well).

 

Hope that answers the questions you were looking for I am new to this kinda stuff so my knowledge is very limited.

 

 

EDIT:

 

I guess I should mention the RSS feed is going to be implemented anyways... its just whether or not we decide to use it So since the RSS feed will be done anyways would it be easier to just go ahead and use it?

Edited February 10, 2013 by Corey

[rolf]

Actually that is a good thing that you do not have access to the server running the database. That means that it is possible to log in to the database remotely. Search for "Android MySQL" to find how it works for MySQL for example, it shouldn't be that hard in Java. To create the RSS, you can use some Java code. To do it on Android, you can pretty much use the same Java code, or find out how to access the RSS.

 

About Windows Azure, it is apparently awesome (really), but it is something much larger than a database Let me be honest, in these courses, just use the standard MySQL server running somewhere. If you don't trust that one, you can set up one yourself at your laptop or homeserver or so. Don't go to Azure if you have no experience with it and the teachers aren't likely to be useful.