Google AppEngine Uses Jetty

Hot on the heels of Google Widget Toolkit(GWT) switching to Jetty, the little server that can has received some more Google luv'n!   Google's new App Engine Java service is powered by Jetty! With App Engine, you can build web applications using standard Java technologies and run them on Google's scalable infrastructure.

Initially it is a little difficult to see Jetty in use, but you can see the jetty classes in the SDK download and if your application throws an exception then investigation of the stack trace in the log reveals the Jetty servlet container is used. 

Not only that, the stack trace and other documentation show that Google have really exploited the embeddablility and extensibility of Jetty at a number of levels:

• They are using their own RPC style connector to receive requests from their front end web servers.
• They use the google account authentication as the only supported authentication mechanism.
• The HTTP sessions are clustered via the database or memcache
• There is an appengine-web.xml configuration file
• Jetty is embedded in their SDK and eclipse development plugin.

Thus Google have plugged in many new and/or extended components in a way that validates our open, component based architecture.   When it comes to application servers we do not believe that one size fits all and strongly encourage such customization for purpose.

We are really pleased that the google App team picked Jetty for their hosting service and welcome them to the ever growing list of Jetty powered projects!

From http://blogs.webtide.com/gregw