Google’s Cloud Service - Google App Engine (PlatformAsAService)

It has been very long time posted my blog. It is much needed too. Yes, an most important much need life changing Event. Now I am back to normal with my regular BusinesAsUsuall work.  Yes, it is time to write my technical blog too. 

Long back, I have explored Google’s Cloud computing solution “Google App Engine”. I have created sample applications using Spring, JSF too. Recently, I have deployed website with static pages for one of my personal need. One of my friend hosted his static website using Google App Engine for his high availability and high scaleability requirement. I strongly believe Google App Engine will be the right choice for many individuals and startups to host their web application to meet their needs. Here is the sample Google App Engine application he hosted http://rainbowmobiles.co.in. 

You may have questions like What is Google App Engine? When to go with Google App Engine?, What is the problem it is trying to solve?. No worries, you will find an answer for such questions by end of my blog. 

Google App Engine is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that lets you deploy and run your applications on the Google infrastructure without having to worry about setting up your own hardware, Operating System or server. Google App Engine lets you run web applications on Google's infrastructure. 
• Easy to build. 
• Easy to maintain.
• Easy to scale as the traffic and storage needs grow.

Cost:
All these are Free. Yes, free for up-to 1 GB of storage and enough CPU and bandwidth to support 5 million page views a month. 10 Applications per Google account.

Use App Engine when:
• You don’t want to get troubled for setting up a server.
• You want instant for-free nearly infinite scalability support.
• Your application’s traffic is spiky and rather unpredictable.
• You don't feel like taking care of your own server monitoring tools.
• You need pricing that fits your actual usage and isn't time-slot based (App engine provides pay-per-drink cost model).
• You are able to chunk long tasks into 60 second pieces.
• You are able to work without direct access to local file system.

Language Support:
• Java, J2EE (Selected framework with some restrictions)
• Python
• PHP

Data Store Support:
• NoSQL schema-less object based data storage, with a query engine and  atomic transactions.
• Data object is called a “Entity” that has a kind (~ table name) and a set of properties (~ column names).
• JAVA JDO/ JPA interfaces and Python datastore interfaces.

Google cloud SQL:
• Provides a relational SQL database service.
• Similar to MySQL RDBMS.
• Fast, scalable and highly available solution. 

Other services:
App Engine also provides a variety of services to perform common operations when managing your application.

• URL Fetch: Facilitates the application’s access to resources on the internet, such as web services or data.
• eMail: Facilitates the application to send e-mail messages using Google infrastructure. 
• Memcache: High performance in-memory key-value storage. Can be used to store temporary data which doesn’t need to be persisted.


I am hoping many new IoT solutions will evolve in near feature using Cloud solutions like Google App Engine. Let’s hope.

Happy Learning
Nanjundan Chinnasamy