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Google App Engine: Request Java Runtime

I was at the Google Campfire One event on April 7th where Google App Engine was officially launched. The whole thing was recorded. So, you didn't miss anything except for the *cold*. Good thing there were camp fires and hot chocolate. Brrrr! Anyway, it sounds like a real sweet and free web application hosting environment. The problem is the only runtime supported initially is Python. However, you can show some Java love by starring this issue that asks Google to add Java support.

Important Note: Please do *not* add a "+1" comment to this issue like many others have already done. All that is necessary is to star the issue. Comments are intended to provide more information about an issue and everyone that stars an issue sees these comments. So, it ends up generating essentially spam email for everyone that has starred the issue.

For persistent storage, you will have access to the same BigTable data storage used by Google's internal applications. You can query your data using GQL. GQL is a SQL-like language for retrieving data entities from the App Engine scalable datastore. While GQL's features are different from those of a query language for a traditional relational database, the GQL syntax is similar to that of SQL.

My favorite part of the evening launch event was Guido van Rossum discussing why he joined the project. I particularly enjoyed his sense of humor starting around the 3:20 mark on this segment of the recording.

If you would like to be one of the first 10K beta testers, you had better sign up right now. If they are not all taken already, I expect those beta accounts to be gone soon.

2007 Rich Web Experience: Up Close and Personal

There were about 300 people in attendance at this conference. There were about 40 people presenting during this three day event. With the communal meals and an attendee/speaker ratio on the order of 8 to 1, there was ample opportunity for attendees to have in-depth conversations with the speakers that you don't normally see at most other conferences. Plus, these speakers are all top caliber folks in the web development field.

Personally, I was able to have an extended conversation with Keith Donald from Interface21 on Friday evening during a conference social hour. This will hopefully lead to a visit by Rod Johnson to one of our Silicon Valley JUG meetings in the coming months.

I would have *loved* to attend the entire conference. Unfortunately, my work commitments did not allow me to do so. Still, the sessions I attended on Saturday were all uniformly excellent. I definitely learned a few new things to add to my bag of tricks when it comes to writing and debugging AJAX code from Venkat Subramaniam on Saturday morning. Besides being an extremely entertaining presenter, Scott Davis gave us a really deep dive into GIS for Web Developers during a 3 hour workshop on Saturday afternoon too.

I had heard great things from others that had attended previous NoFluffJustStuff conferences. My personal experience on Saturday was consistent with those earlier rave reviews. I was glad to hear of their plans for another Rich Web Experience conference in the fall of 2008 here in Silicon Valley. If you missed this one though and want something sooner than that, there is the Bay Area Software Symposium being held in Sunnyvale next month on October 19-21.

2007 Rich Web Experience on September 6-8

The No Fluff Just Stuff symposium series has announced the 2007 Rich Web Experience coming September 6-8 to San Jose, California. RWE 2007 will cover all of the hot areas of interest in the web space today: JavaScript, Ajax, CSS, Flex, Design, etc.... with over 50 technical sessions, panel discussions, keynotes, birds of a feather and open space sessions. RWE 2007 will also include a half day of training in JavaScript, CSS, Ajax, GWT, and Flex.

Special Java User Group Discount of $200 is available! The discount is good thru Monday, August 20th. Use the discount code rwe2007javaug when registering.

2007 Keynote Speakers

• WSI: Crimes Against Web Standards by Molly Holzschlag
• The State of Ajax by Douglas Crockford
• Beyond Ajax by Jesse James Garrett
• The One Web by Eric Miller

What distinguishes RWE 2007 from other Ajax/Web 2.0 Conferences

• 90 Minute Sessions
• Half-Day Workshop Included
• 6 Concurrent Sessions
• Limited Attendance (500 participants)
• All Meals Included
• Unbelievable Swag - Every Attendee gets a Nintendo Wii or iPod Video (30GB)!!

Chance To Win Free Registration

The Silicon Valley Web Developer JUG and the Silicon Valley JUG are co-hosting a talk by Burr Sutter (Sun Java Champion, President of the Atlanta JUG, and a JBoss Engineer) on an open source Enterprise Service Bus for SOA middleware. We will be raffling off a free registration to RWE 2007 at the end of the talk (your odds will be better than 1 in 100). The meeting is coming up on August 21 at VeriSign in Mountain View. Meetings are always free, but, they do require an advance email RSVP for this particular event. Go here for RSVP instructions and further details about the JUG event.

That's All Folks!

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