Fancy running a Python app on Google's scalable architecture? Now you can. Google App Engine has launched offering developers the ability to run python applications (other languages to follow) using a wsgi compliant framework via a built-in framework called webapp. You also get access to datastore
which shows a lot of similarities to Django's modelling API. Datastore is an API that allows you access to Google's scalable database infrastructure and if you want you can also use GQL which stands for Google Query Language which is essentially a subset of SQL.
Django Included
Google have also included Django in the box and there are details of how to configure Django to work within Google App Engine. This highlights the benefits of a framework comprising of loosely coupled components. The only main difference using Django with Google App Engine is that you use the Datastore API instead of the Django data modelling API.Usage limitations
Signing up is free however the following limitations are stipulated:A free account can use up to 500MB of persistent storage and enough CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month
Conclusion
All in all this is a great announcement from Google - for me it's things like this that validate Python as a mature language for use on the web. This also provides an excellent starting-point for anyone who wanted to use Python for a web app but didn't have the means to get started. The app framework is well-documented and I for one look forward to trying it out.via Simon Willison