Essential App Engine

Book excerpt: In Essential App Engine, Adriaan de Jonge shows Java developers how to rapidly build complex, productionquality, performance-driven cloud applications with Google App Engine. Using a start-to-finish case study and extensive Java example code, De Jonge covers the entire lifecycle, from application design and data modeling through security, testing, and deployment. De Jonge introduces breakthrough techniques for creating applications that respond within two seconds, even on cold startup, and allow server responses in hundreds of milliseconds or less throughout the rest of the session. He also demonstrates how to avoid common mistakes that can dramatically reduce cloud application performance and scalability. He thoroughly covers state-of-the-art user interface development and shows how to make the most of Google App Engine's extensive set of APIs. Coverage includes Setting up a development environment that makes it easy to continually address performance Understanding the anatomy of a Google App Engine application Making the right technical setup and design choices for each new application Efficiently modeling data for App Engine's NoSQL data storage Recognizing when to avoid OR-mapping and pass datastore entities directly to HTML templates Finding alternatives to frameworks and libraries that impair App Engine performance Using JavaScript and AJAX on the client side of your cloud applications Improving browser performance and reducing resource consumption via better use of HTML5 and CSS3 Taking advantage of key App Engine APIs: datastore, blobstore, mail, task scheduling, memory caching, URL retrieval, and messaging Securing cloud-based Web applications with Google Accounts, OpenID, and OAuth Improving your cloud development, quality assurance, and deployment processes Targeting, marketing, and selling cloud solutions, from planning to payment handling