Hi Alex, very interesting reading about your apps, see below.. On Thursday, March 29, 2012 12:43:56 AM UTC+2, alex wrote: > > 1. One of the apps I built is a local restaurant online orders: > http://www.orostube.it (they cook pretty much amazingly tasty pizza over > there.) > > A customer drags whatever they want to eat to the > bag<http://www.orostube.it/online>, > checks out with cash (paying on site) or a credit card. The owner gets > notified (Channels API) and confirms the order. Customer receives a > feedback by email + instantly on the page (again via Channels API) with the > time of pickup. The whole "add to the bag", "checkout", "confirm" and "pick > up" thing goes during their lunch and dinner open hours. Actually, "add to > the bag" and "checkout" can be done any time. >
excellent user interface and experience, very slick, I'm impressed! I'm not surprised to hear the hardest part for you was javascript. I compromised on the sexy front-end in favor of practicalities and opted for GWT and the Sencha framework for mine. So 95% of the time I just have to write Java and not worry too much about browser issues, which is great when you don't have a big team.Nice part about all this is I can always re-skin the 'end-customer' facing part without touching the backend or the admin console. > > Plus, the owner has an admin interface where he can add new dishes, pizza, > "featured this week", daily and monthly orders stats (using Cron service to > launch a couple nightly jobs), etc. > > The site never went down (running 8 months now), even during the worst > times GAE infrastructure had. Ever. I've never had such a relief from > having to manage my own servers, load balancers, think about a cron > service, etc., before I started using GAE in production. > yes, my site has never gone down, but I've had quite a few wobbles recently with lots of instances starting up and high latencies (theres another thread about this) > > The main challenges were actually not in coding server side but on the > client javascript (HTML5, make it cross-browsers compatible, drag & drop > events for touch devices). Though, I did have to be careful with credit > cards processing and API calls from their local bank, Channel API caveats ( > http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=4940) and > Timezone handling (as stupid as it might sound). > > > 2. An app for a local event, http://2012.ictdays.it/en > The most challenging stuff here is probably handling users registration: > there are about 90 companies participating to the event. They offer either > job or an internship (or both). Then, there are students (from local > universities), who can make a mini-appointment, 10 min interview, with a > company(ies) they're interested in. > > So, every company has free timeslots. Whenever a user makes an appointment > it becomes busy. There are many users and many slots so, the code updates > entities within xg transactions so that two users wouldn't take the same > free timeslots. > > The other thing is, all those data (e.g. appointments) are being > synchronized with a Google Spreadsheet. Why? Organizers love lists and > spreadsheets. They can mix and match data w/o asking/waiting me to > implement a new feature within the app: they just do something like in the > attachment - create a table where pink squares represent busy slots > (already "taken"). After having this, they just relax in a chair watching > new pink squares appear on that worksheet and focusing on marketing and how > to make the event even more popular. > this is fascinating too. I've been using Google Spreadsheets too, and for me that's one of the massive attractions of the GAE platform; the easy accessibility to a rich API set that has very broad user appeal & familiarity; spreadsheets, calendar, maps etc. I actually use the database for my calendar coz its at the core of my system, but use spreadsheets to let customers put their bike fleets into and out of the system. Coz 99% of my clients were using spreadsheets before, as you say it makes sense to leverage a familiar environment for them. I use asynchronous updates to keep the app in sync with the spreadsheet. (though once loaded they mainly interact with my app). I even wrote a whole backup system using spreadsheets and Task Queues coz when I started there were very limited backup options in Java (not sure I'd recommend the approach though ;) > > > Anyway, the problem here was make Google Spreadsheet sync work: it > (Spreadsheets API) gives timeouts and other errors sometimes (I guess I > POST to the spreadsheet too aggressively sometimes) so Task Queue service > is priceless here. > > > There's not always that much traffic on those two apps, but when it comes > to busy hours it's awesome see QPS raising (sometimes like crazy) and the > app simple scales without me having to do absolutely anything. > > > On Wednesday, March 28, 2012 2:16:39 PM UTC+2, Greg D'Alesandre wrote: >> >> I'd like to second that, there are a lot of folks in the Group from the >> startup and hobbyist communities which is why you hear from those segments >> a lot but there is a large group of folks out there building applications >> (and businesses) along these lines that talk to the App Engine team in >> person but don't participate as much on the list. >> >> I too would love to hear more about it! >> >> Greg D'Alesandre >> Senior Product Manager, Google App Engine >> >> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 8:01 AM, Richard Watson <richard.wat...@gmail.com >> > wrote: >> >>> I think your app is perfect for GAE, actually. Build something you >>> charge for, have it cost less than that, never (or rarely) worry about >>> scaling. The thing is called Google "App" Engine, not >>> Free-Google-Platform-For-Your-LOLcat-Website. Would love to read more >>> about what you've done. >>> >>> On Wednesday, March 28, 2012 8:38:39 AM UTC+2, doright wrote: >>>> >>>> well, I'm not in these guy's league but I have built a Saas on GAEJ, >>>> it's been in production since late 2010, with paying customers. >>>> >>>> I plan to write up my experience at some stage, as I know its not your >>>> typical GAE app. Its more of an enterprise software solution than a true >>>> web-startup, but so far I've found GAE keeps on delivering and I have used >>>> pretty much most of what they have to offer in terms of infrastructure. >>>> Most of what I'm not using yet I certainly plan to use in the future. >>>> >>>> Its been a mainly very positive experience. >>>> (you can see links in there to a library of videos demonstrating the >>>> sort of functionality) >>>> >>>> www.bikeshopmanager.com >>>> >>>> (re-posted this at the correct level, with link) >>>> >>>>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "Google App Engine" group. >>> To view this discussion on the web visit >>> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-appengine/-/HE8c9rSpSBMJ. >>> >>> To post to this group, send email to google-appengine@googlegroups.com. >>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>> google-appengine+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>> For more options, visit this group at >>> http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en. >>> >> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google App Engine" group. 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