Android Database error?

Question

I have a MenuItem in my Android application that deletes all the values in the database, its used more for my debugging purposes, after a while, inserting dummy values get redundant. Anyways, I have used LogCat to debug my program as it runs in the emulator and it gives me an error:

Failure 21 (out of memory) on 0x0 when preparing 'DELETE FROM <MY DBTABLE>'

I can post the code but I doubt its the code.

public void deleteAll(SQLiteDatabase db) {
   try {
        db.execSQL("DELETE FROM " + DATABASE_TABLE);} 
        Log.v(TAG, "Deleting database");
        db.execSQL("DROP TABLE IF EXISTS " + DATABASE_TABLE);
        Log.v(TAG, "Dropping table");
        onCreate(db);
        Log.v(TAG, "Creating new database");} 
   catch (NullPointerException e) { }
   catch (SQLException e) {}
   }
 }

    @Override
public void onCreate(SQLiteDatabase db) {
 // TODO Auto-generated method stub
db.execSQL("CREATE TABLE " + DATABASE_TABLE + "(ID INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,"
+ "LATITUDE INTEGER NOT NULL, LONGITUDE INTEGER NOT NULL, RATING INTEGER NOT NULL)");
}

This isnt my existing function, I had originally had just the:

db.execSQL("DELETE FROM " + DATABASE_TABLE);

but it didn't work, so I commented it out and then tried dropping the table first and THEN create a new table, but same error every time.

Does anyone know why this error occurred or a way for this error not to?

EDIT: This method does not run inside of a loop, its part of a Menu button, that when you select it, invokes the deleteAll() method. A point to note that I call this method through an Adapter class I had made, just to clarify here is the step-through of my code:

private TrackerDBAdapter db;

public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
    switch (item.getItemId()) {
    case VIEW_DATABASE:
        Log.v(TAG, "Clicking on the view database menu option");
        Toast.makeText(this, "This should show the databases.",
                Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
        return true;
    case DELETE_VALUES:
        Log.v(TAG, "Clicking on the delete values menu option");
        db.deleteAll();
        Toast.makeText(this, "Database is empty",
                Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
        return true;

    }

Then inside my TrackAdapter class. The variable dbhelper is a DatabaseHelper object, which has the first deleteAll(SQLiteDatabase db) code in the question.

private DatabaseHelper dbhelper;
private SQLiteDatabase db;

public void deleteAll() {
        dbhelper.deleteAll(db);
}

I do not remember why I call a method, to call another method. It was out of desperation perhaps? But anyways, I am going to fiddle around with it and see if I clean up the code, maybe by doing so I can answer my own question.

Answer 1

I have disregarded invoking the method that invokes another method and checked up on SQLiteDatabase API and saw that it has a built-in delete function:

delete(String tableName, String[] whereClause, String whereArgs) {}

Passing in null as the whereClause deletes the whole entire row, so to add the finishing touches here is the new and improved delete function

public boolean deleteAll() {
    try {
        open();
    }
    catch (SQLException e) {
        Log.v(DatabaseHelper.TAG, "SQLException caught");
    }

    return db.delete(DatabaseHelper.DATABASE_TABLE, null, null) > 0;
}

Answer 2

instead of using Delete From how about trying a DROP TABLE? A delete from Table will create transaction log space. whereas a DROP TABLE command will not create Transaction log space. This could be the cause of your error.