Benefits of packaging sqlite db rather than creating?

When my app is first run, it creates 5 tables and inserts about 50 initial values. The user can delete any of these initial values if they want and they will add to them.

In this situation, what are the pros/cons between creating the db file and copying it over on first run and just putting a bunch of create/insert statements in onCreate?

I开发者_高级运维t's crucial that user information doesn't get overwritten and because of that I'm leaning towards the create/insert statements, since those will fail/be minor if some bug triggers onCreate (if that's possible), whereas copying the db file would wipe the db.

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There are no benefits of packaging the sqlite db rather than creating it IMO, just choose one and code accordingly, worrying that something it wrong with your code and deciding to use one method or another based on that is just an ice patch to bad programming.

No offense meant, I just think the reason why you are asking this question isnt right, the real difference would be between deciding something that just copies, but makes the APK bigger, but perhaps is faster than creating and populating.

I personally go with creating the DB from scratch, you will only do it "once", unless of course your update requires modifications to the DB or the user deleted the data. I would rather have the user wait a while, just once, and make the APK a considerable ammount of KBs lighter.

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I think you've answered your own question as far as the cons of copying the whole db over. (Although I do like copying over databases for unit testing.) If you are looking for a less tedious way to populate those fifty values, you might try using .dump in sqlite3 and putting all of those insert statements into a single resource.

On the other hand, if onCreate gets called when it shouldn't, you probably have bigger problems to worry about.