'Divide and conquer' with Google App Engine

HYDERABAD, INDIA: The Google DevFest 2010 brought forward, especially to young developers, the latest technologies to make computing all together an innovative experience.

The one-day conference held in Hyderabad on 27 February, 2010, turned out to be an eye-opener for several software developers in this part of the country, as it brought forth some of the best practices in using Google tools for easier functioning of work processes.

Google brought Patrick Chanezon from the US to present a few latest versions of its tools and also help software technologists to effectively use them within their environments.

The interactive first session was about Google App Engine. This easy-to-use tool looks as if it will replace the need for data centres and as Partick mentions in this presentation, “This new tool is taking us back to the 1980s model of computing – client-server model. This means mainframe computing will start taking centre stage once again.”

Partick presented the complete structure and usage model of the tool which is likely to reduce large chunk of investments for businesses, since it is all most like plug-and-play model with automatic scalability of the infrastructure based on the level of usage.

Google App Engine is used by many social networking sites as well as business websites such as gigya, bestbuy.com, Buddypoke.com Time.com, Ebay.com, Orange, White House, etc. Google has developed social and mobile app engines.

In fact the focus at DevFest 2010 seems that the Internet major, Google, is now focusing on capturing mobile platform, and thus the company is developing  products that are suitable for mobile devices. So is the Google App Engine.

Why Google App Engine?

It manages your infrastructure and database. Hidden costs like idle capacity, software patches and licensing, etc are not your botheration any more.

Moreover, Google App Engine comes with hardware, networking, etc. Patrick adds, “Monolithic computing is very complicated and distributed computing and data centres have virtually failed. So the need for Google App Engine comes in and we have come out with this tool that is here to change the very functioning of businesses and computing in an organisation.”

Google App Engine believes in the fact that we have to divide and conquer. It is very easy to deploy and scalability is never an issue. This is the best tool for web applications since it can perform parallel processing and is available globally.

“The tool comes with built-in DOS protection and has specialised services such as Mail, XMPP, Task Queue, images, etc. Most importantly Google App Engine can run Java, Phython languages and also JVM Languages. Above all, we use standard APIs as much as possible and are built with complete Java development stack called eclipse,” he adds.

Google App Engine can be easily integrated with your domain and developer can easily add the Google applications so that they appear in Gmail and Docs. With secure data connector, it is very easy to import and export database.

This evolving platform was launched in April 2008, and over the months more and more features have been added. The latest version of Google App Engine comes with datastore cursor and Async urlfetch.

It is free to get started and once started it gives you freedom from infrastructural hazards and maintenance. To put it simple, Google App Engine simply brings forward the fact that work on your specialisation of business, while Google takes care of your computing needs!