From the Dev Corner: An Under-The-Hood Preview of Our New Engine
August 18th, 2008
It’s been a while since we’ve given an update on the progress of the porting of Jaiku to Google App Engine, and many of you have been keen to know how work is progressing.
It’s as if we were retrofitting a locomotive with a powerful new engine. Everything under the classic body gets upgraded.
Just like on the inside the locomotive is composed of a drive train, transmission, and so on, Jaiku is composed of services for features like fetching Web feeds, receiving and sending SMS, the IM bot, and Jaiku Mobile. We’re reimplementing them all so that they work well with the App Engine. In some cases we’re expanding the App Engine platform itself. We’re taking the opportunity to learn from porting Jaiku to benefit both our users and make App Engine better.
The port to App Engine will also benefit third-party developers who are writing cool applications for Jaiku. In the process of rewriting Jaiku’s Web site on Django, we’re improving the way the site is written so 3rd party developers will have greater control over the system and can write applications that provide richer features to their users.
Those who’ve payed attention know how excited we are about open Web standards like OAuth, Microformats, and OpenID. The port to AppEngine is an opportunity to add more support for them to the Jaiku platform and contribute back to the community by implementing support for the standards we love. For example, the new Jaiku API will support OAuth.
The biggest benefit for the Jaiku community is that we’ll be able to grow and support many more users. Where before we used MySQL, now we’re using the more scalable App Engine data store and an improved data model. We’ll be moving existing users’ data to the new architecture to make sure Jaiku scales up for you and all your friends.
So, where are we now? We’re putting the finishing touches on the entire system. As any developer knows, sometimes there are surprises, so we’ll periodically let you know how things are progressing.
We appreciate your patience and can’t wait to open up Jaiku to everyone!
Jonas Nockert Says:
Cool! Sounds like you’ve moving along now. Can’t wait to see it. Hopefully Jaikungfu won’t be needed after the port is released ;)
August 18th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
BUGabundo Says:
need alpha/beta testers? dont even need to ask!
i’m great at finding bugs, and reporting them on a BTS.
August 18th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Jyri Says:
Thanks for offering to beta-test the new Jaiku. We’ll be announcing here when there is more information to be shared. We can’t wait to let you all try out the new platform and hope you understand that although Google’s big, we’re a small team and it takes time port Jaiku and communicate with other teams inside the company.
August 19th, 2008 at 1:10 am
ARJWright Says:
Very interesting news there; and definitely encouraging. It sounds like Jaiku’s move has certainely turned the corner and there is a good deal of momentum happening now that will enable some classic and really neat things. Thanks for the update, and specifically the service aspects of things - all I can say is Jaiku is shaping up to be pretty interesting.
August 19th, 2008 at 1:36 am
gerrymoth Says:
so looking forward to see what you have all been doing.
Long live Jaiku!
August 19th, 2008 at 1:53 am
Conference Crunching 02: Jaiku » Says:
[…] However, Jaiku and Google are still brewing and according to a blogpost just off the press from Jyri Engeström the porting of the service to a new and better platform (Google App Engine) is just about finished. According to Jyri some of the long awaited improvements include extreme scalability without infrastructure headaches, better accessibility for 3rd party developers, and more support for open web standards like OAuth. […]
August 19th, 2008 at 4:10 am
Henrik Hedberg Says:
Sounds excellent! Expecially the improvements of the API for third-party clients are the very thing. I believe Mauku is one of the first clients exploiting the new features.
August 19th, 2008 at 8:22 am
John Says:
Is the App Engine data store *really* more scalable than MySQL or was it as much to do with software & data design?
August 19th, 2008 at 9:10 am
krassyo Says:
Thumbs up, guys! Keep the good work!
August 19th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Kim Bach Says:
Great with this update on the progress, and the App Engine is some seriously cool stuff, looking very much forward to this.
Just one nagging question. Should I worry about my data, and are you planning to keep the old URLs?
August 19th, 2008 at 9:11 am
Kim Bach Says:
Guess you answered the question regarding the data *blush*. Good luck with the porting!
August 19th, 2008 at 9:16 am
mdanuz Says:
Hey guys you are doing a great job , keep up the good work ,can’t wait to try the new jaiku.
Question
Are you guys planning to integrate jaiku with mobile google maps ?
August 19th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Jyri Says:
@mdanuz while we appreciate your question, we’re not able to comment on speculation about future products. We’re always on the lookout for opportunities to develop cool new apps and services.
August 19th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Jyri Says:
@Kim Bach good question - we’re planning to keep the old URLs, so existing links should not break.
August 19th, 2008 at 10:44 am
vimoh Says:
All I ask is that this blog stays updated with *something* about Jaiku. Helps keep the faith. Good luck with the port.
August 19th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Oncle Tom Says:
Yeah that’s so great to hear that :)
I love reading “We’re putting the finishing touches” ;-) It’s the good moment to come back on the scene and ship Jaiku with Android too.
I’m definitely waiting to admire your work.
Kudos !
August 19th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Sacha QS Says:
that’s so good to hear! it’s finally going to happen. yay! :)
My I dare ask if there’s a projected time frame for a release? within one month or two?…
August 21st, 2008 at 3:28 am
Jyri Says:
@Sacha QS We don’t normally give out release dates. We plan to ship as soon as the system is ready. Please watch this blog for updates.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Michael Says:
Woo! OAuth!
August 29th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
warzabidul Says:
Sounds interesting and I look forward to using the new version as it improves over the next few days and weeks. We already see quite a bit more interest in the platform.
August 29th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Valentine Aaqil Mahmood Says:
Cool Cool hehehe
August 29th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
ups Says:
Would be interesting to see some comments in how is the new platform (especially the moving out of mySQL) behaving?
September 1st, 2008 at 2:40 am