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Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup

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Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup

#22
post #14
post #10

How is Google App Engine? Are there any pain points one should be aware of before using it?

Cold startup sucks - it's horrendous for Java and just bad for Python. If you have a popular app, this isn't an issue. If you don't, it hurts.

Cold startup is almost unnoticeable for Python apps (bite my lip! see update below). On the Java side it can be an issue but, as with most things, if you dig around, you can find some acceptable workarounds.

Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup

#24
post #11
post #10

How is Google App Engine? Are there any pain points one should be aware of before using it?

You mean besides lock-in?

There's no lock-in on the Java side. Change a few lines in jdconfig.xml, add the datanucleus-rdbms jar file, add a JDBC driver jar file and you're app will run on Tomcat or Jetty with MySQL or any database with a JDBC driver.

Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup

#25
post #22
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cold startup sucks - it's horrendous for Java and just bad for Python. If you have a popular app, this isn't an issue. If you don't, it hurts.

Cold startup is almost unnoticeable for Python apps (bite my lip! see update below). On the Java side it can be an issue but, as with most things, if you dig around, you can find some acceptable workarounds.

No - I've seen 'Hello World' style apps take over 4s to cold startup. For example http://timezonetimezone.appspot.com/iscorrect?query=EST

Took 4.67s to render http://www.webpagetest.org/result/100306_5PZ7/1/details/

I monitored cold startup for a month on one of my apps and some times see 10s cold startup. http://www.webpagetest.org/result/100309_5TDW/

This is after profiling, reducing imports, caching, using app appstats, etc.

Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup

#26
post #10

How is Google App Engine? Are there any pain points one should be aware of before using it?

The 30 second per page limit can be a pain too. If you need to manipulate (i.e. validate, import, export, etc.) more than a few hundred persistent objects, you'll need to write your code to do it in chunks.

Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup

#27
post #26
post #10

How is Google App Engine? Are there any pain points one should be aware of before using it?

The 30 second per page limit can be a pain too. If you need to manipulate (i.e. validate, import, export, etc.) more than a few hundred persistent objects, you'll need to write your code to do it in chunks.

That's what Task Queue is for:

With the Task Queue API, applications can perform work outside of a user request but initiated by a user request. If an app needs to execute some background work, it may use the Task Queue API to organize that work into small, discrete units, called Tasks. The app then inserts these Tasks into one or more Queues. App Engine automatically detects new Tasks and executes them when system resources permit.

Python:

http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/taskqueue/overv...

Java:

http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/java/taskqueue/overvie...

Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup

#28
post #25
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cold startup is almost unnoticeable for Python apps (bite my lip! see update below). On the Java side it can be an issue but, as with most things, if you dig around, you can find some acceptable workarounds.

No - I've seen 'Hello World' style apps take over 4s to cold startup. For example http://timezonetimezone.appspot.com/iscorrect?query=EST Took 4.67s to render http://www.webpagetest.org/result/100306_5PZ7/1/details/ I monitored cold startup for a month on one of my apps and some times see 10s cold startup. http://www.webpagetest.org/result/100309_5TDW/ This is after profiling, reducing imports, caching, using app app…

Wow, you're right. I just ran a test on one of my Python apps and found the same thing. I always assumed 4 seconds was an acceptable start up time, especially when compared with some of the Java apps I have runnning on App Engine which have often exceeded the 30 second page limit on startup and generated a DeadlineExceededException. Thanks for showing your results. I would never have known this was an issue.
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