Overview

altengine is a cloud platform that provides a set of simple, managed services modeled on the developer experience of Google App Engine. Rather than exposing services through language-specific SDKs, altengine makes each of its offerings available over clean REST APIs that exchange JSON, allowing applications written in any environment to use them directly. The platform's initial services cover full-text search, realtime messaging, and document storage. Developers manage their applications and credentials through a web-based developer console at console.altengine.net.

Services

altengine launched with three services, each addressing a distinct application need:

  • Search API — A full-text search service that preserves the semantics of App Engine's legacy Search service, including its query language, typed document fields, faceted search, and result sorting. These capabilities are reached over altengine's own REST API rather than through the original App Engine language SDKs.
  • Channel API — A realtime messaging service based on the publish/subscribe model of App Engine's legacy Channel service, allowing servers to push messages to connected clients. As with the Search API, its behavior is preserved but delivered over a REST interface.
  • Datastore API — A JSON document store featuring a bounded query engine, joins, and grouped aggregates. The Datastore provides strongly consistent reads, so data returned by a query reflects the most recently written values.

Relationship to App Engine

The Search and Channel services offered by altengine are revivals of two services that Google App Engine retired. altengine reproduces their established semantics — the query language, field types, facets, and sorting of Search, and the realtime pub/sub behavior of Channel — while exposing them through its own REST/JSON API instead of the original platform's SDKs. Despite this lineage, altengine is an independent project and is not affiliated with Google. The Datastore API is a distinct offering rather than a direct revival, drawing on the same App Engine-style approach to managed services.

Pricing Model

altengine uses a single usage-based pricing plan in which charges are tied to actual consumption of the services. The plan includes a free monthly allowance, and there is no charge for idle capacity, meaning applications are not billed for reserved or standing clusters when they are not in use. Current details are published on the platform's website.