Google App Engine 1.8.1 Changes Revealed

The world's leading search engine, Google, has released the latest version of Google App Engine, with the Search API moving a stage closer to General Availability. Here are some of the most significant changes in Google App Engine 1.8.1: *** Search API: The new Search API allows applications to perform Google-like searches over structured data. You can now search across several different types of data such as plain text, HTML, atom, numbers, dates, and geographic locations. Google will now charge for operations storage, as part of their important changes with the move to the preview version. Although in preview, you'll pay $0.18 per GB per month for the total storage use; simple queries will be charged at $0.13 per 10k queries, while complex queries will be charged at $0.60 per 10K queries and the blog notes that prices may change when it reaches GA. *** Python Deployment The Google App Engine 1.8.1 has the ability to deploy Python and PHP apps using the Git tool. Google was quoted as saying that, “Once you complete the initial setup steps, you will be ready to deploy apps with the same ease with which you push code to a git repository.” *** Google Cloud Storage Client Library Designed to make it easier to access Google Cloud Storage from the App Engine. The Cloud Storage Client Library will be upgraded to GA in an upcoming release of App Engine so Google is encouraging developers to start making the move from the Files API to the Storage Client Library. *** Task Queues With the Task Queue you can tasks asynchronously without blocking. allowing your applications to process requests more efficiently. *** Datastore Datastore will improve performance for the Datastore courtesy of a change to the Datastore courtesy of a change to the Datastore default auto ID policy, and the ability to use DISTINCT queries when working in Python. For more information regarding the improvements of Google Cloud, just visit the Google App Engine website.