[Numpy-discussion] numpy and the Google App Engine

[Christopher Hanley]

Greetings,

Google provides a product called App Engine.  The description from
their site follows,

"Google App Engine enables you to build and host web apps on the same
systems that power Google applications.
App Engine offers fast development and deployment; simple
administration, with no need to worry about hardware,
patches or backups; and effortless scalability. "

You can deploy applications written in either Python or JAVA.  There
are free and paid versions of the service.

The Google App Engine would appear to be a powerful source of CPU
cycles for scientific computing.  Unfortunately this is currently not
the case because numpy is not one of the supported libraries.  The
Python App Engine allows only the installation of user supplied pure
Python code.

I have recently returned from attending the Google I/O conference in
San Francisco.  While there I inquired into the possibility of getting
numpy added.  The basic response was that there doesn't appear to be
much interest from the community given the amount of work it would
take to vet and add numpy.

I would like to ask your help in changing this perception.

The quickest and easiest thing you can do would be to add your "me
too" to this feature request (item #190) on the support site:

http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=190

If this issue is important to you could also consider raising this
issue in the related Google Group:

http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine

Letting Google know how you will use numpy would be helpful.  If you
or your institution would be willing to pay for service if you could
deploy cloud applications that required numpy would be helpful to let
them know as well.

Finally, if you run into any App Engine developers (Guido included)
let them know that you would like to see numpy added.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Chris


-- 
Christopher Hanley
Senior Systems Software Engineer
Space Telescope Science Institute
3700 San Martin Drive
Baltimore MD, 21218
(410) 338-4338