Google and Red Hat bring App Engine to JBoss

Google is collaborating with Red Hat to enable developers to run Java application designed for Google's App Engine Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) in private cloud installations, according to a post on Google's Cloud Platform Blog. Both companies have been working together, improving the open source App Engine Test Compatibility Kit (TCK) to further interoperability between Google's own platform and Red Hat's third party implementation CapeDwarf. The result is an implementation on top of Red Hat's JBoss application server that allows users to transfer their Java code from Google's infrastructure to their internal JBoss installation and back.

The lion's share of the interoperability work was taken up by Google engineers providing tests for their native App Engine implementation for the TCK while Red Hat developers contributed tests for CapeDwarf. All tests were then run against Google's App Engine service, a locally installed App Engine SDK and a CapeDwarf implementation. As part of the TCK, the tests have been released as open source code under the Apache License.

CapeDwarf, which is still under development, can be run on top of JBoss on Red Hat's OpenShift or on Google's Compute Engine and already supports many parts of the App Engine API. According to the CapeDwarf web site, "the ultimate goal of the CapeDwarf project is to fully implement all the APIs of the Google App Engine." Under the hood, CapeDwarf is using existing JBoss APIs like Infinispan, JGroups, PicketLink and HornetQ.

Beta versions of CapeDwarf are available for download from the JBoss web site. Its source code is licensed under the LGPL.

(fab)