Web Application on Resources in the Cloud

“What? Why? When? How?” are the four questions I am going to answer to introduce my first series of posts.

• What? I am going to build a modern Web application using resources on the Cloud. Specifically, I am going to build an open Web application for consumers to find and review products in a big database, and for producers to offer products and find consumers. The infrastructure will use Google App Engine infrastructure [1].

• Why? There are many aspects:
• There is the professional benefit: In my post about Gary Reynolds' presentation “Career Advice '08” [2], or as posted by Tim O'Reilly in his post “Work on Stuff that Matters: First Principles” [3], it is mentioned that delivering value is a key differentiator. Building this working application will demonstrate my various expertise.
• As an active member of Diku Dilenga [4] which delivers microloans to small enterprises in Democratic Republic of the Congo, I know that such application will help microentrepreneurs finding customers, and vice-versa. This project helps sharing my expertise with people who need help.
• This project gives me also a chance to contribute to the open source community which has already given so much to me, my life, and my work.

• When? I have already played with the Google App Engine SDK on my machine. I wanted to be sure no blocking issue would prevent me building the application. The application is already available at: http://prod-cons.appspot.com/

• How? I am a Agile Methodology Adopter [5] so I do not plan far ahead. I am going to prepare a backlog with the tasks to implement, and I am going to address them according to their priority order. The code is regularly pushed on github [6]: http://github.com/DomDerrien/diku-dilenga/tree.
  

If you like the idea, if you want to learn new mechanisms, if you are OK with writing lots of unit tests, contact me. Because I am pretty busy at work, and I have to assume responsibilities for Diku Dilenga, the project will move slowly. But it will move and it will be fun!

Hints on the coming post in that series:

• Git as my SCM Solution;
• Agile: SCRUM is hype, but XP is more important...
• Google App Engine: free hosting and powerful SDK;
• Internationalization of GAE Applications;
• MVC Pattern and REST API applied to GAE Applications;
• Automatic Testing within GAE Environment.

A+, Dom
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Sources:

1. Google App Engine website.
2. My post on Career Advice '08 
3. Tim O'Reilly post Work on Stuff that Matters: First Principles.
4. Diku Dilenga website.
5. Agile Manifesto, and Agile Methodology description on Wikipedia
6. Github.com offers free hosting of open sources (charges applied to personal and commercial hosting).