Comments on: Why Google App Engine is broken and what Google must do to fix it.

By: bigblobae – store big data blobs on Goolge AppEngine | Jan Sterba

bigblobae – store big data blobs on Goolge AppEngine | Jan Sterba — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:39:15 +0000

[...] cannot be bigger and sice the only storage you have is the database, you are kinda screwed (like this guy, who jumps first for most of related google [...]

By: David Gruzman

David Gruzman — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 17:40:22 +0000

All points are very valid. I am also curious how google is going to add support for the batch processing. I think it will be some Map/Reduce flavor.
It will ve also interesting to estimate – why do they built such strict limitations on thier platform.

By: PAul

PAul — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 09:36:51 +0000

Two real show stoppers for me:

1) The lack of an OR clause in GAE’s version of SQL. I need to create seperate queries and append the results in memory. If there is a sort on the concatonated results then the CPU time is extended – and sometimes the CPU time limit is blown.

2) You cannot filter on the same field twice in GAE’s version of SQL. Meaning I cannot set up a construct of Field A = “1″ and (Field B > “1″ and Field B < "2). I need to create very complex workarounds for this.

By: B

__B__ — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:42:49 +0000

@Jad & @Mark C: I couldn’t agree more. There are no dates in the post, in the url, nothing. I’m having a terrible user experience since I’m used to have these information in other blogs. Is this old information? I’m planning in using app engine, came across this post, and don’t know if all of these are old news.

We NEED these features in a blog. Just because your motto is “The age of features is dead; Welcome to the age of User Experience.” it doesn’t mean you have to remove all of them. Aral, is there a plausible argument about removing such important information from your posts as dates?

By: Jed

Jed — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 04:12:51 +0000

@Mark C: Lol I could not agree more

“Welcome to the age of User Experience” (per blog tagline) — coming from the “age of features” like an idea of when something was posted, I prefer features.

By: Mark C

Mark C — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:26:10 +0000

There is nothing worse than a web post with no date. Reading this I have no idea if it’s valuable up-to-date information, or some ancient artifact that it’s safe to disregard completely. None of the comments have dates either. Unbelievably lame.

By: Tristan

Tristan — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:40:20 +0000

To address the 1MB datastore storage limit, here is an open source project (mine), which solves the issue. Everything is implemented, except the queries (it’s still a work in process).

http://code.google.com/p/mindash-datastore/

By: sam

sam — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:44:33 +0000

Hi Aral,
Thanks for writing this. At first sight, google app engine seemed to be every developers dream. It lets you do what every developer loves to do ( writing programs that get stuff done ) while removing all the boring stuff ( like maintaining your server, packaging and deploying your app, worrying about performance etc)
But your article makes it clear that GAE is not there yet. I started out with rails. it is beautiful. But I worried about performance and decided use Jruby to make it faster. Then thought may be GAE might be better for me. I know as a framework rails is way ahead of GAE but the idea of not worrying about hosting and maintenance and the low price tag (starting from zero) made it so attractive. But thanks to this article, I avoided wasting my time with GAE now. But I am quite hopeful one day it will be ready for serious development. And that will be an exciting day for every developer I think.

By: Using Google App Engine as Your Own Content Delivery Network « Why Limit Media

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 14:44:36 +0000

[...] In the right circumstances, App Engine can be a real boon. I run my own site using the method I’ve discussed above, and I’m very happy with it. But App Engine does have its disadvantages, most notably those discussed by Aral Balkan in his post ‘Why Google App Engine is broken and what Google must do to fix it‘. [...]

By: Aral

Aral — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:48:22 +0000

Hey Werner,

Would you be willing to address some of those points. If you can write up a short update (in list form, perhaps), I’d be happy to update the article with it (I’m not actively developing with Google App Engine at the moment). Thanks! :)