Database data insertion

public class DataBaseHandler extends SQLiteOpenHelper {

    private static String DATABASE_NAME = "UnitDatabase";
    private static String MEASUREMENT_TYPE_TABLE = "measurement_types";
    private static String idCol = "id";
    private static String typeCol = "type";
    private static int DATABASE_VERSION = 1;
    private static String[] measurementType = new String[] {"acceleration", "angles", "area", "astronomical",
            "density", "energy", "force", "frequency", "length/distance", "power", "pressure", "speed",
            "temperature", "torque", "volume", "weight"};

    public DataBaseHandler(Context context) {
            super(context, DATABASE_NAME, null, DATABASE_VERSION);
    }

    @Override
    public void onCreate(SQLiteDatabase db) {
        String create_table = "CREATE TABLE " + MEASUREMENT_TYPE_TABLE +
                "(" + idCol + " integer primary key autoincrement " +
                typeCol + " varchar(255) not null ";

        db.execSQL(create_table);
    }

    /**
     * Populate the table containing measurement types
     * @param db
     */
    public void populateMeasurementTable(SQLiteDatabase db) {
        db = this.getWritableDatabase();
        for(int i = 0; i < measurementType.length; i++) {
            ContentValues values = new ContentValues();
            values.put(typeCol, measurementType[i]);
            db.insert(MEASUREMENT_TYPE_TABLE, null, values);
        }
    }
}

I thought I would post my code first and then ask the question. My question is with my implementation of the last method (populateMeasurementTable()). I wanted to be able to insert multiple values in to the table and this is the way I am going to do it, however I don't think it is an efficient way of doing it especially if I have larger arrays such as:

```
private static String[] densityUnitTypes = new String[] { "grain/cubic foot", "grain/cubic inch",
"grain/gallon [UK]", "grain/gallon [US]", "grain/ounce [UK]", "grain/ounce

For exact knowledge about finding out which is the most effective, the best way to find that out is to time using:

long start = System.nanoTime();
... perform operations ...
long stop = System.nanoTime();
double milliSecondsElapsed = (stop - start) / 1000000.0;

I think your way of doing it currently is quite good.

I found that there is another way of doing it but it seems to involve writing a seemingly SQL query that looks like this:

INSERT INTO Contacts 
SELECT 'ae0caa6a-8ff6-d63f-0253-110b20ac2127' AS ID, 'xxx' AS FirstName, 'xxx' AS LastName, '9008987887' AS PhoneNumber, 'xxx@gmail.com' AS EmailId, 'Yes' AS Status 
UNION SELECT '9afab56e-a18a-47f2-fd62-35c78d8e0d94', 'yyy', 'yyy', '7890988909', 'yyy@gmail.com', 'Yes' 
UNION SELECT '378d757a-ee60-07a4-e8bc-396b402c3270', 'zzz', 'zzz', '9000898454', 'zzz@gmail.com', 'Yes'

Unless that alternative way of inserting rows to the database improves performance significantly, I would stick to the way that you are doing it now. I imagine that the code required to write this SQL statement would be quite ugly (if you would want to transform your current String[]/ContentValues approach into this SQL statement). Especially considering that I assume you only perform this mass-insertion once. Besides, the code required to transform into SQL also takes time to execute of course, which might neglect the performance increase you would get from doing the mass-insertion with a single SQL statement.

Also, your current approach is very easy to read and understand.

As for whether or not you should write a bulkInsert() method, you could do it just for the challenge of it... if you don't have anything better to do :)
Summary

Stick to what you are using right now.

StackExchange Code Review Q#48312, answer score: 5