Some frustration with JRuby + Rails on Google AppEngine

A few engineers at Google and other developers are doing some good work towards getting Rails running on AppEngine both robustly and in a way that provides a good local development environment. One problem is simply that if your web app is not active, initializing JRuby + Rails + and all required gems can time out (30 second window for handling requests).

The Java and Python support for AppEngine is fantastic, but for two projects I want to do (my own projects, but may be revenue generating :-) I want a more agile programming language that Java and while my Python skills are sort-of OK, my knowledge of Django is very light.

I should probably just bite the bullet and spin up on Django, but I would strongly prefer working in Ruby. I have been experimenting with the JRuby + Sinatra + ERB + datamapper combination and at least an inactive web application spins up well within the 30 second request timeout window. I very much like datamapper (object identity issues) and it should not be too difficult to be completely portable on two platforms (given data import/export utilities):
  • JRuby + AppEngine
  • Ruby (1.8.x or 1.9.x) on any server
I like Sinatra as a light weight framework, and this technology choice is OK with me, except for one worry: my reason for wanting to use AppEngine (rather that Amazon EC2+S3+EBS, which is what I have been using for most customer projects and my own stuff) is to minimize my hosting costs if one or both of my ideas works out - I worry that using JRuby on Java AppEngine will not provide the same high performance as Java or Python web apps. I did compare (using the Apache benchmark tool) request times for JRuby + Sinatra + AppEngine (about 400 milliseconds/request) with Java + JSP + AppEngine (about 600 milliseconds per request). The rendered Java page was more complex so the benchmark between JRuby + Sinatra vs. Java + JSP looks like a wash.

For future projects if I need lots of back end processing (map reduce, spidering sites, etc.) then I will stick with Amazon EC2. If I can get by with just a web interface and a data store, then I would prefer AppEngine (to save a little money). Two great platforms!

Comments

  1. Charles Oliver Nutter7:42 AM

    It's also worth noting that there's a lot of work going on to speed up GAE/J that look like they'll get JRoR init times well under 30s. After that, improvements to RubyGems and JRuby can get it to a reasonable speed. It is definitely being addressed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mark Watson, author and consultant7:53 AM

    Hello Jay: that is good to know, thanks. I actually had a 30 second startup problem with a Java web app because it had to do some data initialization - I had to work around that.

    Hello Charles: long term, I am not worried about good JRoR support on AppEngine: I am sure that will happen. For now, JRuby + Sinatra + ERB + DataMapper is working well for me.

    Best regards,
    Mark

    ReplyDelete
  3. Kyaw Kyaw Naing / George4:08 AM

    Merb + Sinatra + Data Mapper + eveny Pony (for email) are fine.

    But the need to install and compile 1 to 2 to 3 dozens of things, is a show-stopper for BOTH dabblers and old floks, or enterprisy guys like us.

    Let's cheer the gurus who are developing the code/plygins/bundlersetc for us.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mark Watson, author and consultant8:22 AM

    George: I wrote this blog post a couple of months ago, but the situation for me is the same: no problems using Sinatra + Datamaper on AppEngine, but Rails still does not work well for me. That said both the ApEngine and JRuby teams are making continuous improvements - patience is good :-)

    ReplyDelete

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