Google App Engine – An introduction

Many of us already handled a web application for our academic projects. But only a few of them are dare to buy a domain name and host it, so that anybody can access the application through Internet. I have completed my master of computer application project last week. It is a git based wiki implementation, and I will post some posts about that project soon. I also thought about buying a domain name, so that I can put it in my resume and the companies can view it online at the time of interview. I thought it will help me getting better jobs.

Then I come to know about the Google’s App Engine service. Like blogger, orkut, gmail, docs etc Google is also availing better services for students like Google Code, App Engine.

What is a Google App Engine? It is a service of Google where programmers can host their web applications at no cost. This free service gives us a domain name and we can host the code so that everyone can see your application by typing that url. Now Google App Engine supports only Python and Java. It gives a version control for every version of our code that are deployed. It gives many information like CPU time used, No. of requests, memory used etc.

How App Engine works? Google gives this service using a cloud computing technology. Google has server farms where thousands of server machines are working 24x7. When we are hosting an application, it is stored somewhere in these servers. Our application gets some amount of RAM and it is processed by some CPU.

Is it completely free? It is free to common applications. But there is a daily quota for each measures like average CPU time. I think normal applications will not reach that quota easily. If your application is viewed by a million people per day, then the quota may be crossed.

I think many of us are not aware of App Engine service of Google. If you have knowledge in Python or Java, try for an app engine project. I completed an app engine project and I will post about it soon. I think that will be helpful to the beginners.

Thanks

AJAY