Google App Engine and the Services Revolution
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Published
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
at
1:08 AM
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Scalable stacks for service creation have been so few and far between. Unless you want to shell out big $$$ for N servers (read 5+), load balancing, clustered storage/database, and staff to all that gear running smoothly, scalable service creation was really out of reach for most developers. Google enters the market for service creation with App Engine and my take is that they have hit a sweet spot with this early release.
Here is my list of great features:
1. Local development and testing
2. Python with Standard Library and Django Framework access
3. Scalability is built in
4. Free for Small to Medium services
5. Custom domain support
Instead of mucking with machine images, you simply focus on your application logic and the service does the rest. Additionally Google is providing key services like Big Table for data storage and retrieval.
As a python fan it is great to see the language as a first class citizen at the heart of Google's new service. Python has been an essential part of Google since day 1 and they have been ever present at every Python conference I have attended recruiting like mad.
I will be exploring App Engine over the next few week. It looks like a great solution for scalable service creation.
Great work Google!
Ted :)
Thaks Ted for your views on Google App Engine. I am a fan of google and Adobe. and soon going to switch to Ubuntu cause I already have FLEX Builder and AIR for Linux.
Google reader helped me to get in touch with you all the time.
but that's not what I am writing for.
I just want to ask you help us to get work with Google App Engine. so that we can build FLEX and AIR Apps of top of Google App Engine.
The problem is its only support python right this moment. I have already came to know about "pyAMF".
But I dont know anything about python. I use AMFPHP and recently BlazeDS.
Give us some guideline.
The guys at pyAMF are already working on it. Check out http://pyamf.org/wiki/GoogleAppEngine
"Unless you want to shell out big $$$ for N servers (read 5+), load balancing, clustered storage/database, and staff to all that gear running smoothly, scalable service creation was really out of reach for most developers."
Really? What about using Amazon's EC2 and S3?
EC2 and S3 still cost big $ and you are still handling scaling each image running. To use EC2 properly you really need the higher level API's within rightscale.com to do the job right. I think Google has done a great job at releasing something that is scalable by any developer and at the small to medium levels is free.
Ted :)
Hey Ted,
I wrote a quick primer on getting up and running with Flash and Google App Engine:
http://aralbalkan.com/1307
I'm getting ready to release an updated version this week that should provide a nice starting point for Flash/Flex apps on GAE.
Here's a 6 minute screencast with some tips on how to build a Flex client for Google App Engine.