NetNewsWire's Brent Simmons On "Switching Away From Core Data"

Brent Simmons (podcast interview), author of the popular RSS Reader NetNewsWire, published a thorough piece on his weblog about switching away from Core Data for specific performance reasons.

Simmons says that Core Data “is the right way to go 95% of the time” but that, because — as an object graph and persistence manager — it’s not the same as a database that there are specific cases where it makes sense to use SQLite directly. This article uses specific examples to illustrate when it makes sense to do so.

For more on the differences between Core Data and a database, and for reaction to Brent’s post from some of the industry’s elder statesmen see:

Matt Gallagher’s The differences between Core Data and a Database

Wolf Rentzsch’s Brent switching away from Core Data, who says, “This pains me. Not because it isn’t true — it very much is. It pains me for the same reason I bet it pains Aaron Hillegass — Apple already solved this problem. In 1995.”

Gus Mueller’s Brent Simmons: On switching away from Core Data who says, “I’ve never used Core Data in a shipping product…”