Google and SpringSource join hands in the heavens

App Engine eyes MySQL

Google I/O Google and VMware's SpringSource arm have teamed up to offer a series of development tools for building Java apps that can be deployed across multiple web-based hosting services. That includes Google's own App Engine, VMware-happy infrastructure services, and third-party services such as Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud.

In announcing the new partnership this morning at its annual developer conference in San Francisco, California, Google also introduced a new incarnation of App Engine designed specifically for enterprises. Google App Engine for Business includes a central admin console from managing applications across the so-called platform cloud and new pricing designed to be enterprise friendly.

As he unveiled the new App engine, Google technical lead Kevin Gibbs also said that "later this year" Google App Engine will allow devs to use MySQL - a significant step. To date, applications have been limited to Google's distributed database BigTable. BigTable is completely proprietary and it uses a very different data model than other database. This means that it's difficult to build for - for the average developer - and porting apps elsewhere can be a problem as well.

Open-source Java framework specialist SpringSource is offering a rapid app development tool known as Spring Roo, while Mountain View is introducing data presentation widgets for its Google Web Toolkit designed to speed the development of web applications. And with the latest milestone release of Eclipse-based SpringSource Tool Suite - available here - devs can now deploy apps onto their own VMware-based infrastructure, Google App Engine for Business, various VMware-happy services, or third-party services such as Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud.

Google has also introduced a new version of its Web Toolkit Speed Tracer designed to identify app performance slowdowns on the server-side as well as on the client and on the network. This involves grabbing server-side time traces from SpringSource's Spring Insight and Google App Engine AppStats. ®