Hi Joseph, I've previously made this point here - http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine/browse_thread/thread/6319dceae6ec73e7/4d4d464c25537bda?lnk=gst&q=#4d4d464c25537bda - so Google - people really do recommend against GAE because your rodmap is so impenetrable. Joseph, you may recognise a little of Bob in yourself :)
I am a C -> C++ -> Java -> J2EE guy over many years, so python is not my language of choice - I only started using python with app engine. I'm not here because of comfort with a technology I know, I'm here because of business requirements. I thik you'll find as the next few years progress that IT houses everywhere will be pushing back against massive in house platforms. Amaszon manages the hardware side of that pushback, Google manages hardware *and* sofware. The killer feature with GAE is the platform offering - with Amazon you have to roll your own software platform, which is time consuming and maintenance intensive. Yes Amazon provides a hardware virtualisation service that lets you do that, and I use it for a number if things. But for a lean architecture, which leads to agility, which makes business happy, you want as much as possible in the not-my-problem basket - i.e. in GAE. If you've spent much time in the world of relational databases, then BigTable is an absolute killer feature. It collapses Scalability, Performance, Fault Tolerance, and ORM into a simple offering with sensible mechanisms for transaction management. All of this stuff ends up as not-my-problem. With Amazon, most of it is my problem to some degree. To a degree, I think the argument that if it isn't on the (laughably undefined) roadmap then you have to go elsewhere is a bit hasty for a beta software platform. Granted, google is always beta, but GAE is in early beta by their standard - you can't even pay for it yet. This is an ideal time to try and influence the architectural direction of the platform. That said, I think google should realise that if they don't publish a proper roadmap (especially for must-have platform features - e.g. SLA, asynch etc.), then people are going to recommend dumping GAE in favour of something else. The only feature request (that I am proposing) here is customer data partitioning. It is not a massive big deal, especially considering that this is already in place, you just have to deploy one app per customer, which is a bit tedious. It doesn't seem like a sufficient reason to jump ship and roll my own everything at Amazon. It seems to me like an opportunity to say 'Hey, could you make this aspect, which already exists, a little easier?' It seems to be like a ludicrously obvious step for Google to set up an application market place, like the iphone app store, and open that market to all of their google apps customers. It is a license for Google to print money - more so than the iphone, because we are talking business customers, not joe-public. If it isn't on their (secret) roadmap, then my name is Fred. This is the direction I have suggested for the customer based data partitioning in http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?can=2&q=945 Finally, it is obvious that Andy and I are coming at this from different (strongly held) positions. That is usually a good thing, as long as both parties are honest in their attempts to understand the other. Colin (not Fred) On Jan 7, 2:17 pm, "bowman.jos...@gmail.com" <bowman.jos...@gmail.com> wrote: > Guys, I think you need to take a step back and look at this from a > higher level. > > Appengine supplies you with an instance in a cloud that includes a > customized python set, and a BigTable backend. It does not support > multiple BigTable backends and design wise I doubt it ever will. There > comes a time when you have to look at your application and determine > what is the right environment for it to be built in to meet your > business requirements. In this case, it does not sound like appengine > in and of itself is going to meet those requirements. > > Generally business requirements dictate the speed at which your > product must become available for use. Google has a published roadmap > for appengine, and support for multiple BigTable instances per > application is not on it, and they have not even implied it's > something they have any interest in implementing. > > So, at this point, I'd suggest you look at other alternatives in order > to meet your business requirements. > > - Separate it by table within BigTable as has been suggested. > - Pull everything back inhouse and build server(s) capable of > supporting your application with the requirements you have. Such as > with MySQL running a different database for each of your users. > - Examine other cloud db storage options to see if they can meet your > requirements, such as the offering from Amazon. Though, while you > could use appengine combined with that solution, I would question how > quick you'd hit the urlfetch quota limits. > - Examine all the offerings at Amazon and other cloud providers such > as Aptana to see if any of them are a better fit for your > requirements. > > Sometimes you have to stop and realize that business/security > requirements will dictate the technology you need to use, rather than > personal preference/comfort with technology you know. Over a decade of > preaching Linux while supporting Exchange and Citrix on Windows has > pounded this into my head. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google App Engine" group. 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