Developing with Google App Engine (Firstpress) [Paperback]

Eugene Ciurana (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1430218312 | ISBN-13: 978-1430218319 | Publication Date: January 31, 2009 | Edition: 1

Google has been able to create a massively scalable architecture so that they can run their applications on literally hundreds of millions of machines without a hitch. Now they are making that technology available to the public in the form of Google App Engine. This book discusses what it takes to develop cloud computing applications using the GAE and walks you through the process of not only developing the applications but also deploying them.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Eugene Ciurana has been working in technology-related fields since around 1983.  Currently he is a systems architect and engineering manager at walmart.com.  He’s worked in technology development (networking/embedded/real-time/mission-critical systems) for some of the largest companies the world like IBM, Varco International, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Wal-Mart, Bank of America, Nortel, Volksbank (Austria), Univex/Celanese, Sun Microsystems, Nexis/Lexis, etc. He runs the popular Tesla Testament web site at teslatestament.com.in

Product Details

• Paperback: 164 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (January 31, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430218312
• ISBN-13: 978-1430218319
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,446,811 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Read the online Google docs instead, January 27, 2009

By 

A. Andrews (Sammamish, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Developing with Google App Engine (Firstpress) (Paperback)

I was really looking forward to reading this book. I've been working with the Google App Engine from the first week it was released, but as a Python newbie, I still thought I'd get a lot out of a book dedicated to GAE development.

Unfortunately, the book doesn't go far enough beyond the Google online documentation to be useful. The book is thin, but it also uses an incredibly large font size throughout. It's like a junior high school student trying to stretch a book report to meet the teacher's page number requirement.

There are plenty of topics that warrant discussion but are strangely absent. Performance profiling and the performance of the datastore are topics that many developers are struggling with but the book says little or nothing on these topics, and others.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointment, February 15, 2009

By 

Burke (Chester Springs, PA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Developing with Google App Engine (Firstpress) (Paperback)

I was looking forward to this book, but it didn't come anywhere close to my expectations.

On the cover, they claim 168 pages. I guess that's true if you count the table of contents, the dedication, chapter 9 that doesn't give you any actual information on the administration of applications, related titles, copyright, and a couple of blank pages in the total. I count more like 144 pages of big font.

I would have overlooked the length and been more generous with my rating, but what's there just isn't very good. It doesn't try to be any sort of a reference, but it doesn't flow, either. The author uses a bookmarking application to present concepts, but the order and presentation just don't work very well. It comes out as a bunch of random code snip-its, without good explanation.

I learned a lot more from Google's online "Hello, World" tutorial.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Minimal coverage of an exciting topic, October 21, 2009

By 

James Beswick (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Developing with Google App Engine (Firstpress) (Paperback)

Take a look at Amazon's "Look Inside" feature and you should get a sense of what's wrong here: this is one very thin book written in very large font, and won't get you anywhere near to developing and deploying an app on GAE. As another review has said, it's shocking that Google's online 'Hello World' example is more instructive than anything presented here. Additionally, though the author has a background in scaling and it's mentioned several times, there's no practical information given on how to build a Digg-proof app beyond the fact that GAE will handle it somehow.