What are Mobile Databases?

Compared to database management systems (SGBD) , mobile databases are managed from a simple manager, that is, they are not capable of processing and managing large amounts of information because they are stored locally on mobile phones. So applications like WhatsApp save their backup locally and it is also scheduled to be uploaded according to user settings to Google Drive .

This in order to assure the user that their chats are backed up, just to mention an example, these databases must have an encryption algorithm to prevent malicious applications from opening access doors and stealing our sensitive information.

They are not the only databases that exist within mobile phones, most applications are designed so that through APIs they connect to a database manager, these store large amounts of information and when we consult our information it does it through GET, POST, UPDATE, CREATE, DELETE etc requests. Then, through the query languages, the information can be processed, everything is done through hidden processes for the user or better known as BACKEND .

Here are some examples of databases used by mobiles locally:

Database data type  Support
BerkeleyDB relational, objects, key-value pairs, documents Android, iOS
Couchbase Lite documents Android, iOS
LevelDB key-value pairs Android, iOS
SQLite relational Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Blackberry

RELATIONAL DATABASE

As its name indicates, the relational database is capable of relating data, that is, if we see it in the form of graphs, these are represented as follows:

Design of the Relational Model of a Database
Design of the Relational Model of a Database

That is to say that it relates the tables, each of the tables contains an object and attributes that belong to a class and if you want to consult the information of both tables, these are related and show the 2 objects at the same time, all this is achieved through the query language, the query language helps us to process and manage such information. But what relationship do relational databases have with mobiles?

The only relationship that exists is that they help connect applications, for example, Facebook, it has large amounts of information about us and everything is consulted through the internet, that is why we cannot see or publish information with other users, since these databases data are hosted on a server whose infrastructure relates and processes large amounts of information.

In addition, SQLite, which is a main mobile database blind, is not capable of relating information on a large scale, since this manager was mainly designed to store basic information on our mobile and makes very little use of internet resources.

A few years ago I extracted the WhatsApp database and decrypted it and this was the result of the chats: 

This is just an example of local databases, WhatsApp also has a database manager similar to SQLite, but with the difference that it is encrypted, that is, we need a decryption key.

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