I want to make a Google App Engine application; have a decent JavaSE/Swing + Javascript/(X)HTML + relational database (SQL) background

Question

Can you refer me to a good starting place for learning GAE from what I already know? I plan to make a fairly elaborate application, and I'm not completely certain on where to start or how far I'll need to go (JavaEE?). I'd rather hear from someone who already knows what's involved than start off by guessing and stumbling.

Answer 1

Up until now the best documentation Ive found is the official one on code.google.com/appengine. One JavaEE doc that comes in handy is the HttpServlet Spec, since this is the basic class for responding to http requests on App Engine. For file uploads there is a useful lib at apache commons. Since you are not allowed to manipulate files on the server in gae, all your persistence will need some knowledge of the datastore, jdo and datanucleus enhancer.

Additionally to that you might want to consider using a third party framework to be more productive. There are a lot of products for various purposes around. What kind of application will you develop?