Question

In my app I use a static database to store all counties and census areas with the states and territories of the US. This gets updated by the government every 10 years. I use it to search within a county but there are multiple counties of the same name so a state or territory has to be picked first then they select the county within. My question is that I currently have that data in an SQLite database, is that the most efficient or should I use core data? Ther are 3600 lines with 4 items on each line. I just want it to be the most efficient way of storing and reading the data. There will be no writing to it. So which should I choose, I’m open to others than the two I mentioned.

Answer 1

for you case:

core data:

more flexible

• (+) it’s a ORM (a big plus! So you can add methods to your data models or store whole object-trees with one command)
• (+) better integrated into XCode
• (+) can easy handle migration of the data scheme
• (-) performance (in your case, 3600records only one table)

sqlite:

• (+)performance
• (-)only C bindings (or you need a
  framework)

and don’t forget, CoreData is another layer on the top of sqlite. So,.. it’s not so easy to compare those both things.