Attention all you readers dreaming of building the next brilliant Web application: Google App Engine is designed to simplify the problem of deploying and scaling Web applications.

Contributing editor Peter Wayner provides insight into Google's game-changing app dev platform in the cloud in his first look at the Google App Engine, currently in beta.

Wayner's bottom line: "Google App Engine hides the grime of deploying a scalable application to a number of servers. The limitations on the sandbox make this 'cloud' best for dynamic Web sites that act as a relatively thin layer of business logic sitting on top of a data store. Google's Python/Django framework makes developing simple applications quick, and the database structure encourages scalable design by excluding joins.

"On the downside, there's not much support for AJAX, porting some applications will require rethinking the database schema, and your coders better like Python, which is currently the only option."

There's a very good reason why the beta version has a waiting list. Read the full review here.

Posted by Caroline Craig on May 12, 2008 07:31 AM