On the fate of SQLitePersistentObjects…

I wrote SQLitePersistentObjects specifically to address the fact that Apple didn't port Core Data to the iPhone SDK. Today, one of the more subtle points of the iPhone OS 3.0 presentation, never mentioned and missed by most people (but shown clearly on one slide), is that Core Data has been ported to the iPhone in the 3.0 sdk. I confirmed with two different people inside Apple that the slide was accurate. We now have Core Data in the house.

That leaves me with a bit of a conundrum. SQLitePersistentObjects has taken on a bit of a life of its own. It's being used in a number of production applications, and in several more that are under development. There is a fairly large team of people contributing to the project. And, frankly, there are aspects of SQLPO that I like better than Core Data. But, I make no bones about it: Core Data is better. It's been around longer, been tested more, and has been worked on by some really, really smart people at Apple. I would put money on it being faster than SQLPO in most scenarios. I think SQLPO scores points on development time, at least for simpler projects, but not by much - not by enough.

So, I'm giving very serious thought to discontinuing my own work on SQLitePersistentObjects. I very much like it and, in some ways, like it better than Core Data. But, SQLPO was written to fulfill a need, and that need has just been filled by Apple. I'm just not sure it's worth my time to continue active development on SQLPO. Time is a finite commodity, and one of which I rarely have enough. This is not a decision I've made lightly. I'm really quite proud of SQLitePersistentObjects and think it has a lot of potential. But, there's only one of me.

If there's anyone who's interested in continuing development on SQLPO, by all means, let me know. I'll make you owner of the project over on Google Code and will stay on the dev team to answer questions and do some bug fixing. Otherwise, for the foreseeable future, my work on SQLPO is going to be limited to bugs that are impacting products I've already developed with it.

On a different, but related note: I'm installing the iPhone 3.0 SDK on my machine as we speak. However, since this is a pre-release SDK, that means were back to being under NDA, so I won't be doing any posts on 3.0 functionality until the summertime when the 3.0 OS gets released to the general public.