Google AppEngine is a great tool for building simple web applications which are automatically scalable. All of the basic building blocks are readily available and accessible from both python and java. This includes a database, a caching layer, and support for background tasks.

What about the big data analytics and informatics that made Google famous? Does AppEngine help us there as well? The answer is yes; although with some serious limitations.

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A few thoughts from my first test of Google App Engine.

My goal was to put up a prototype java web app for pushing email alerts based on RSS content (more to come on the full idea). Unfortunately, it took much longer than I expected to get things going (longer than my web app protoype took to write) – leaving me feeling a bit disappointed.  On the up side,  the app has been running quite well for about a week now.

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