Customer Reviews

Programming Google App Engine: Build and Run Scalable Web Apps on Google's Infrastructure (Animal Guide)

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I've worked with the App Engine for about six months and have gained most of my knowledge from the online documentation. I wish I had had this book when I started. This is the best explanation I've seen of entities and how they relate to transactions. The code examples in Python and Java are extremely helpful and give great insight into how the two languages approach the App Engine abstractions. The sections on data modeling and Django integration are particularly good. Not only did this book fill in gaps in my knowledge, but it is sufficiently detailed that I'm sure I will keep it on my desk as a reference. I've tried the other App Engine books and this is by far the best. If you have any interest in the App Engine, start here.

I think the book does a great job at explaining Google App Engine. There was no "technical fluff" added to the book which I always appreciate. By "technical fluff" I mean unneeded text which should be looked up else where like in documentation. Also, I found the book very easy to follow and found I could manage to jump around from one chapter to another without reading the book linearly. For example, I was able to read the 1st chapter and a half and then jump to the Django chapter and get a sample Django 1.1 app with the admin interface live on App Engine without much trouble.

This is a great, and fairly in-depth, guide to the Google App Engine API's. It presents both Python and Java API's on equal footing. Navigation through the book was very clear and straightforward whether you want to take the Java or the Python path. The development environments are presented as well. This book will be most useful if you are already familiar with web application development and just need a tutorial with simple examples for how to do this type of programming on the Google App Engine framework.

... Metadata...
Title: Programming Google App Engine
Author: Dan Sanderson
Publisher: O'Reilly
ISBN: 059652272X

... Disclaimer...
1. I purchased it using my own money.
2. I have a beginner-level understanding of GAE before I read this book.


... Some background on Google App Engine...
Google App Engine (also used by the acronym GAE) is a platform for developing and hosting web applications in Google-managed data centers. It was first released as a beta version in April 2008. Google App Engine is cloud computing technology. It virtualizes applications across multiple servers and data centers. Other "cloud"-based platforms include offerings such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft's Azure Services Platform. App Engine differs from services like Amazon Web Services, though, in that AWS is Infrastructure as a Service while App Engine is Platform as a Service. (From Google App Engine, Wikipedia)
As always, you can find more details on Wiki.

... Now, let's talk about the book...

Programming Google App Engine (GAE) is an extremely practical book.

It starts off by giving readers an overview on what GAE is capable (And incapable) of - From how it's architected, to how you, as a developer in GAE, administrates your app on Google's cloud.

Then it dives all the details - From how to register and create the basic application to data storage, caching, web request, messaging and job scheduling, and the book wraps up with showing you how you can deploy your application to GAE.

You can find all the topics the book covers here.

... The Goods...

#1 Chapter one is fantastic. It re-tells the story of "This is how you get started with GAE" in a concise story - Comparing to Google's Getting started guide, this chapter not only saves you time, but also cut the unnecessary brain power and memory space to comprehend something you really don't need to understand at this early stage.

#2 The 3 datastore-related chapters (Chatper 4 - 6), while long, tells you the differences between a traditional relational database and Google's BigTable data storage mechanism. It also points out what you need to watch out for when designing a data model for GAE to a certain extend - Which is extremely helpful to get you started.

... The Bads...

If the author could use a small project as a example to demonstrate all the points he discussed in the book. It'll make all theories easier to understand - In the datastore section, due to my heavy background in relational database, I need to re-read couple sections to fully understand what the author was trying to convey. There are examples - But they are all isolated, and at times it could be a bit confusing to re-learn another example.

... Wrapping Up...

Great book - Good price, great info. I should have spent the time to read this book instead of browsing Google's GAE tutorial online. I'd recommend this book to anyone who're interested in building his/her own App on Google's cloud.

... On The Side...

In the datastore chapter, while the author did cover the basics on how the BigTable implementation differs from relational database. I'd like to see more in terms of how, if you're from a relational database background, how you can adopt the new data store model without bringing your "old self" into the new technology.

This is currently the best book on the market describing Google App Engine -- and to the best of my knowledge, I've reviewed them all, either through Safari Books Online or in book stores. The author, Dan Sanderson, is a tech writer and software engineer at Google and clearly had access to the development team. The book is current (or current enough) as of December 2010. While some of the information is available online, the book contains information I've not found elsewhere. Most helpful is product architectural descriptions, in particular, descriptions of datastore indexing schemes and transaction processing. It addresses programming in both Python and Java. I highly recommend it.

Note this is not a book on Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and I've yet to find one I recommend. To develop an application for App Engine, you will need GWT as well. Programming in GWT has been a walk on the wild side. There's much conflicting information on the web and it requires a bit of 'nuclear particle physics' software engineering to sort it out -- you fire a 'software proton' through GWT and see what spews out the other side. With enough protons, the product internals are gradually revealed. Programming Google App Engine considerably reduces the need for this kind of experimentation on the App Engine side.

It didn't take long for me to read over this book and come to grips with Google App Engine.

It quickly helped me know what the App Engine would be great for and the limitations of the platform.

Id recommend it for anyone looking at using the platform as it saves you hours of looking though online documentation that I found a bit thin and can help you come to grips with the use of the platform for Java and Python.

Having Django in the book is also a great plus.

The transaction was awesome....very smooth and fast.....
The product was pretty good too...as advertised...Quite easy to understand and quickly write your first gae code...

Original review written by Federico Yankelevich, JUG Lugano, www.juglugano.ch

I was curious to know details and how to program on Google App Engine since 6 months. I installed it in my development environment and tried a DIY approach reading nice documents and articles from the web. I was able to get started and to extend some examples. But I was missing a complete overview of the system and I was not able to optimize my application architecture in order to get advantage of the powerful features implemented in GAE.
After reading the book I changed my mind about how should I develop my applications to run on GAE.
The book gives a overview on GAE architecture, on the developer environment (using Eclipse), on web request and Tasks handling. This introduction is sufficient to get the basic concepts to start developing.
Very interesting is the deep explanation of the datastore structure and the best ways to use it (and workaround its limits). 5 chapters very well written and complete, with examples in both Python and Java code.
The chapter on Django integration (a web framework) covers only the Python language, for Java you have to choose the framework you prefer and integrate it using resources on the web, not a big deal, but this is the only chapter I was missing in the book.
Overall I consider the book a good and complete reference. A great point to start for new GAE developers .

I feel like this book presents the GAE as a "glue" of multiple Java technologies without going beyond what the user sees.

I would have liked more info on porting GAE apps and a better understanding of the underlying environment. There are many things you can do with GAE, but this book is not really focused on what you cannot causing frustrations when trying to use incompatible plugins.

I was curious to know details and how to program on Google App Engine since 6 months. I installed it in my development environment and tried a DIY approach reading nice documents and articles from the web. I was able to get started and to extend some examples. But I was missing a complete overview of the system and I was not able to optimize my application architecture in order to get advantage of the powerful features implemented in GAE.
After reading the book I changed my mind about how should I develop my applications to run on GAE.
The book gives an overview on GAE architecture, on the developer environment (using Eclipse), on web request and Tasks handling. This introduction is sufficient to get the basic concepts to start developing.
Very interesting is the deep explanation of the datastore structure and the best ways to use it (and workaround its limits). 5 chapters very well written and complete, with examples in both Python and Java code.
The chapter on Django integration (a web framework) covers only the Python language, for Java you have to choose the framework you prefer and integrate it using resources on the web, not a big deal, but this is the only chapter I was missing in the book.
Overall I consider the book a good and complete reference. A great point to start for new GAE developers .