Update 6:: Back to the Future for Data Storage. We are in the middle of a renaissance in data storage with the application of many new ideas and techniques; there's huge potential for breaking out of thinking about data storage in just one way.
Update 5: Building Scalable Web Applications with Google App Engine by Brett Slatkin.
Update 4: Why Google App Engine is broken and what Google must do to fix it by Aral Balkan. We don't care that it can scale. We care that it does scale. And that it scales when you need it the most. Issues: 1MB limit on data structures; 1MB limit on data structures; the short-term high CPU quota; quotas in general; Admin? What's that?
Update 3: BigTable Blues. Catherine Devlin couldn't port an application to GAE because it can't do basic filtering and can't search 5,000 records without timing out: "Querying from 5000 records - too much for the mighty BigTable, apparently." Followup: not the future database. "90% of the work of this project has been trying to figure out workarounds and kludges for its bizzare limitations."
Update 2: Having doubts about AppEngine. Excellent and surprisingly civil debate on if GAE is a viable delivery platform for real applications. Concerns swirl over poor performance, lack of a roadmap, perpetual beta status, poor support, and a quota system as torture chamber model of scalability. GAE is obviously part of Google's grand plan (browser, gears, android, etc) to emasculate Microsoft, so the future looks bright, but is GAE a good choice now?
Update: Here are a few experience reports of developers using GAE. Diwaker Gupta likes how easy it is to get started on the good documentation. Doesn't like all the limits and poor performance. James here and here also likes the ease of use but finds the data model takes some getting used to and is concerned the API limits won't scale for a real site. He doesn't like how external connections are handled and wants a database where the schema is easier to manage. These posts mirror some of my own concerns. GAE is scalable for Google, but it may not be scalable for my application.

It's been a few days now since GAE (Google App Engine) was released and we had our First Look. It's high time for a retrospective. Too soon? Hey, this is Internet time baby. So how is GAE doing? I did get an invite so hopefully I'll have a more experience grounded take a little later. I don't know Python and being the more methodical type it may take me a while. To perform our retrospective we'll take a look at the three sources of information available to us: actual applications in the AppGallery, blogspew, and developer issues in the forum.

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