Core Data: Data Storage and Management for iOS, OS X, and iCloud (Pragmatic Programmers)

Q&A with "Core Data, 2nd edition" author Marcus Zarra

Q. Why is Core Data important? Why do developers need to know it?

A. Core Data is Apple's recommended model management and persistence framework. By learning and using Core Data, you can save yourself a significant amount of development time on every application you build. In some cases, you can save as much as 30 percent of the application development time by using Core Data.

Q. How has Core Data changed since the first edition of this book?

A. Starting with iOS 5.0 and Mac OS X 10.7, the majority of Core Data has remained remarkably consistent since the first release of this book. It has become even more friendly with threading. In addition, the framework has solved a few difficult issues that existed since its inception. However, our understanding of Core Data on iOS has grown significantly since its initial release. That increased understanding is included in this book.

Q. What’s new in this edition?

A. Significant portions of the book have been rewritten with a new focus primarily on iOS, and secondarily on OS X. Since iOS has all of the features that are available on OS X, you can learn the entirety of Core Data through iOS. The portions of the book that focus solely on iOS are clearly marked.

Q. What kind of background do readers need to get the most out of this book?

A. A reader interested in this book should be familiar with Objective-C and Cocoa. The book assumes you have a basic working knowledge of Objective-C and have developed one or more iOS/Mac OS X applications. It cannot be stressed enough that this book is written for developers at an intermediate level and could be quite difficult for a beginner to consume.

Q. What kind of application do you build in this book, and what does Core Data add to it?

A. From the beginning of the book, we will develop a recipe iOS application and then refine it as our knowledge and understanding grows. Core Data is an integral part of the application that we develop and handles the management of the data structures as well as the persistence of the data. Without Core Data, we would need to write a significant amount of code to replace it.

Q. What should readers expect to take away from the book?

A. A solid understanding of Core Data and how to use it in both future and existing applications. Once you become comfortable with Core Data, you won’t want to use any other persistence framework.