[Python-talk] Google app engine

[Ray Cote]

At 10:28 AM -0400 4/9/08, Kent Johnson wrote:
>Christopher Schmidt wrote:
>  > Possibly, but I think that limited datastore APIs are not entirely
>>  different from the step from SQL->ORM: you abandon a bit of flexibility
>>  for a lot of benefit, and for many applications, I think that the same
>>  thing applies: BigTable hits a fair number of use cases without being
>>  difficult.  
>
>Yes, I'm not saying BigTable is bad, but I think it does have a
>different sweet spot than, say, Postgres. I have an app that frequently
>does three- and four-table joins, I'm not sure how I would write that in
>GAE datastore. I imagine it would require some thought and re-architecting.

Not having any table joins at all is definitely a significantly 
different way of looking at your data. Most of what I've written over 
the last few years would have difficulty fitting into this model -- 
but there are definitely a few sites that would fit very well.

The most interesting effect of App Engine is going to be a bunch of 
applications that are being written to think in terms of BigTable. 
There's other Big Table systems out there -- some open source -- so 
this knowledge is not going to be locked into Google-land.

At the moment, I'm unclear as to precisely how locked into Google you are.
- You can obviously write your own user log-in system -- you don't 
need to use the Google accounts (unless there's something in the 
Terms of Service).
- You can bet there'll be a GQL-compatible front-end added to any and 
all of the BigTable-like systems out there already -- so this allows 
you to move off Google as well.
- You can write an emulation layer for their web access routines as well.

The question I've not heard raised is how are they going to migrate 
to a Python 2.6 environment. I'm hoping they did not just lock the 
industry into 2.5 in perpetuity.

All-in-all another interesting tool to figure out best use for.
--Ray


-- 

Raymond Cote
Appropriate Solutions, Inc.
PO Box 458 ~ Peterborough, NH 03458-0458
Phone: 603.924.6079 ~ Fax: 603.924.8668
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