

Star issue 313 to encourage Google App Engine team to provide distributed transactions. - amichail
http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=313

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villageidiot
What about the other 473 issues?

<http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/list>

Shouldn't we vote for them too?

Not that distributed transactions wouldn't be yummy but having worked on App
Engine myself (as recently as yesterday in fact), I can say very confidently
that they have _much bigger fish to fry_ at the moment than distributed
transactions. If people don't take my word on this, and why should they,
please read Aral Balkan, who is one of the early victims/adopters:

"Why Google App Engine is broken and what Google must do to fix it."

<http://aralbalkan.com/1504>

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amichail
Distributed transactions are rather fundamental. For example, if an
interaction between two users affects data associated with both, then you need
distributed transactions to ensure both updates.

~~~
villageidiot
Before I worked on App Engine I would have agreed with you that distributed
transactions were fundamental.

But it is hard to overstate how troublesome App Engine is to work with. I am
grateful to Google for providing this service but it really requires you to
start with a greatly lowered set of expectations. There are a wide range of
severe bugs that make the service unusable for a significant number of people.

By Google's own admission, the development environment does not reflect some
basic errors the app encounters once deployed.

<gobbledygook>For example, the "500 Server Error" issue makes it impossible
for some people to deploy their app entirely or otherwise requires radical
revisions because no logged errors are issued in development or production to
explain a "typo or mis-configuration"</gobbledygook>.

Until basic issues like these have been addressed, I would consider
distributed transactions on App Engine to be, ironically, a luxury.

