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Google AppEngine

I noticed an article about yet another fine google service, AppEngine. It looks like google is releasing a set of tools that allow you to build a web application to run on Google’s servers. It is in preview right now (registration is already full, I tried). The idea is that you write an application using Google’s SDK which, according to Google, provides:

  • Dynamic webserving, with full support of common web technologies 
  • Persistent storage (powered by Bigtable and GFS with queries, sorting, and transactions)
  • Automatic scaling and load balancing
  • Google APIs for authenticating users and sending email
  • Fully featured local development environment

So basically google is giving you all the tools you need to build a shared-nothing web application with great scalability, running on their infrastructure. The glory of it all, is that you don’t even have to know what shared-nothing is or appreciate why it works. Just use the authentication system and database driver they hand you and it’s all done. Oh and the first 500MB of storage, 200M megacycles of CPU per day, and 10GB bandwidth per day are likely going to be free. You have to pay if you want more than that. Right now it’s for python only but I see mention of support for other languages too. Oh and they include the Django template module built into the SDK for you Django nerds. I wonder how long it’ll be before they open up more devloper accounts. I quiver with anticipation.

2 Comments, Comment or Ping

  1. Did you know what ’shared-nothing’ architecture was or did you steal that from another article? >:)

  2. You actually explained to me what a shared nothing architecture was, about 6 months ago in relation to some project you were working on. I didn’t have to go snag that one from another site :)

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