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I want to rewrite a webapp to Python and to use App Engine but I have several cron scripts that can be long running. Some time ago I used App Engine and wanted to know if there are now methods to run these scripts because App Engine has its limits. If you want to get an idea of ​​one of the scripts there is one that calculates the karma users based on what has been done on the website, so there are mathematical calculations, many executions SQL... and can take much time.


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You mean your site spies on my karma while I'm browsing it? Don't post URL of your site here, please... –  Kizz Aug 18 '11 at 23:33

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Well, you won't be running any SQL queries, because AppEngine doesn't use SQL.

Two new options for running expensive calculations are backends and MapReduce - which you choose depends on exactly what you want to achieve.

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Thank you! Well this is one of the scripts I mentioned before github.com/carloshellin/holasoy/blob/master/scripts/karma6.php Can I use in backends or MapReduce? (of course I have to rewrite it in python and use GQL) –  Carlos Hellin Aug 18 '11 at 11:32
@Carlos: You can't do that sort of thing in GQL. GQL is syntactic sugar that lets your write SELECT queries against the datastore that almost let you pretend you're using SQL. It doesn't do DELETE or UPDATE queries at all. –  Wooble Aug 18 '11 at 14:07
But I can use the methods put() and delete() to update or delete, right? –  Carlos Hellin Aug 18 '11 at 14:48

If it's just the scheduling scripts that you're asking about, then there is cron for App Engine, for both Python and Java

Edit: you can now use Google Cloud SQL with Google App Engine

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