Cloud to RIA: Accessing Google App Engine (Java) Data Through Flex AMF - Part I

[Part I] [Part II] [Part III]

Introduction

Cloud and RIA (Rich Internet Application) are probably the hottest buzzwords today in the web world. You can look at cloud as a virtual server that provides single-point access to a distributed (often across the globe) collection of hardware/software and coming in three shapes:

1. IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service. A good example is Amazon EC2, where you basically get a virtual machine (Amazon Machine Image) on which you install what you want.
2. PaaS: Platform as a Service. This adds infrastructure software to IaaS so you don't start from scratch. Examples are Google App Engine (GAE) and Salesforce Force.com.
3. SaaS: Software as a Service. Here, you get the full package that you tweak/customize to your needs. Best example of course is Salesforce.com.

Clouds have many benefits, most importantly:

1. You don't need to plan/invest in hardware/software upfront
2. Your infrastructure will scale as your business/needs grow
3. You system will be fault-tolerant and secure
4. You don't need to maintain/manage the setup

In this example, I'm using GAE (Java) for the cloud. Google had required developers to use Python for GAE till recently, when they announced a Java version. All references to GAE in this write-up refer to GAE (Java). GAE is free to get started; you will need a Gmail account.

An RIA is an advanced web (or desktop) front-end that's more sophisticated than traditional HTML/CSS/JavaScript web apps. The dominant web RIA today is Adobe Flex, although Microsoft Silverlight is gaining rapidly. Sun (Oracle) recently announced JavaFX that's gaining some traction in the Java community. We will use Flex as the RIA in this example; you will need Flex Builder (free trial for 60 days) and Eclipse.

Technology Choices

Once we've decided to hook up a Flex RIA to a GAE cloud, we need to look at some specifics. First, how do you represent the data on GAE? GAE (Java) does not allow saving to files on the server, so our only option is to save on the Google BigTable. In fact, it's a better option anyhow. Luckily, the new GAE has a standards-based Java persistence API (rather than the Google-proprietary API with Python): JDO and JPA. I'm using JPA for this example.

Next, the interchange data format. Popular message formats with Flex are: XML (SOAP or REST), JSON, and the Adobe-proprietary AMF. XML is verbose and although accesss through REST performs reasonably well, more succint representations like JSON are better for larger chunks of data. But the most efficient (and strongly typed) representation is with AMF, which is what we will use for this example. To employ AMF for the data exchange, we use the Flex RemoteObject.

Adobe has made the AMF spec public, and there are multiple free implementations, probably the most important of which are: BlazeDS, WebORB, and GraniteDS. I've tried all the three with GAE. BlazeDS never worked for me, and as of today I'm not aware of any official fixes, though there are blog reports of unofficial workarounds. WebORB kind of worked with their fix in the sense I could move data through POJO interfaces to data, but not the persisted classes themselves. I also had performance issues. GraniteDS worked like a charm, and that's what we'll use in this example. Do keep checking Will it play in App Engine for the latest info.

Preparation

To get started, you need to do two things right away:

1. Get a GAE account. This is easy and free: just sign up at Google App Engine.
2. Get a GAE (Java) access. Sign up at GAE (Java) Sign-up.

Once you've done this, let's get going with the real thing... in Part II.