Slow progress and fighting with sqlite

Second day at the (home) office was harder than the first. Fiddling with queries on sqlite took up a lot of the day. I have been doing sql for years, but I think I will just have to test the stuff out more thoroughly before I put it into an android program. The cycle between develop, deploy and test is too long and fiddly to be working out why your where clause is eliminating all of your rows.

Outer join -
I added an outer join to my code today. Not exactly rocket science, but very handy all the same. The app I am developing allows people pick 30 day challenges. They enter their progress against these items as they go along. It is supposed to be a way to get into new, productive habits. I got the idea here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnfBXjWm7hc

Its early days yet, but I like these kind of apps, so it seemed like as good a place as any to start. The outer join is useful for pulling back the tasks that the user has in their list. It is outer as I want to show them the ones they have progressed on as well as those they have just entered in the app.

ListViews - started watching this today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDBM6wVEO70

It is pretty good and I got what I needed (an explanation of how to use getView), so I gave it a miss. Will watch the rest of it soon though. Some tricky bits on getting ListViews working properly and these guys really know there stuff, so worth the time I reckon.

Sqlite does not require column types -
strange but true. After years of typing columns this seems weird, but it works just fine. I tried it out today by taking the type off all of my columns. Works the same as when they were there. Good to have one less thing to worry about.

Sqlite Database browser -
I am using this for all of my querying (except some stuff that I do directly on the device/emulator for which I just use sqlite3 in the shell). It is not as crisp as the pro tools for the big box dbs (SQLDeveloper for Oracle and Query Analyser for SQL Server), but its free and beats the shell.
http://sqlitebrowser.sourceforge.net/

So that's it for now. Layouts are proving to be very tricky. All mine look brutal. When I get to the stage of releasing a commercial app, I will involve a graphic designer, but I still have to be able to implement what he/she gives me, so need to work on this one.
So today's home work is:
Sqlite ins and outs (and just be a bit more careful in future) and
Improve my layouts.

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