Google Offers Mobile Developers New Cloud Endpoints

For developers, the latest Google Endpoints can make it simpler, he said. “Google says this will make it easier because you build your own endpoint library and they distribute it. It was extra work to do this on your own before.”

Mueller called this “a very good thing for mobile developers” that isn’t yet being done by others, including Amazon.

Meanwhile, Google has also updated its Mobile Backend Starter (MBS), a one-click deployable, complete mobile back end built on Cloud Endpoints for client applications, wrote Ben-Ayoun. “MBS provides a ready-to-use, cloud backend and client-side framework for Android and iOS,” he wrote. “We have distilled the best practices from hundreds of successful mobile back-ends on App Engine to give developers a turnkey solution that requires no server side development.”

The new version of MBS includes more efficient handling of large media files using Google Cloud Storage, as well as updated template mobile clients with updated user interfaces and best practices, wrote Ben-Ayoun.

Cloud Improvements

Google is always busy making improvements and advances in its cloud platform components and services for developers. In late October, Google replaced its old Google API Console with a new, expanded and redesigned Google Cloud Console to help developers organize and use the more than 60 APIs now offered by Google. The new Google Cloud Console makes managing the over 60 Google APIs housed within easier than ever, according to Google. Soon the new cloud console will be set as the default choice for the console by Google, though users will have the ability to revert back to the old version.

Earlier in October, Google released several technical papers to help cloud developers learn more about the development tools it offers through its Google Compute Engine services. The papers, “Overview of Google Compute Engine for Cloud Developers” and “Building High Availability Applications on Google Compute Engine,” offer insights and details about how the platform can be used and developed for business users.

In September, Google unveiled its second version update of the Google App Engine since August, with the latest release 1.8.4 including a host of features that the company says will make it more flexible and simpler for developers to use for their applications. Included in 1.8.4 is support for Dynamic Web Projects in Eclipse to better support Google Cloud Endpoints and App Engine Backends, as well as fixes for several bugs. One other important new feature is the ability of Google App Engine to handle differential snapshots of a Google Compute Engine persistent disk, so that only the most recently changed data is updated.

The August launch of the previous App Engine 1.8.3 was also accompanied by deeper features for Google Compute Engine and the Google Cloud Datastore as the search giant continues to add functions and robustness to the Google Cloud Platform.

In July, Google unveiled several new features in the Google Cloud Storage environment to make it easier for developers to manage, access and upload data into the cloud. Those new capabilities included automatic deletion policies, regional buckets and faster uploads as part of a wide range of services.

In June, Google unveiled a new Cloud Playground environment where developers can quickly try out ideas on a whim, without having to commit to setting up a local development environment that’s safe for testing coding experiments outside of the production infrastructure. The Cloud Playground is slated as a place where application developers can try out all kinds of things, from sample code to viewing how production APIs will behave, in a safe, controlled place without having to manage the testing environment, according to Google. The new Cloud Playground initially supports only Python 2.7 App Engine apps.

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Originally published on eWeek.