
In mis510 project, your team is required to create a
web business, with a complete web site and
business functionalities for specific customers, using
either Google App Engine or Amazon EC2 platform.

Since Google App Engine and Amazon EC2 have
distinct interfaces, service features and pricing
policies, this tutorial gives instructions of how to use
these platforms respectively.




A cloud platform for publishing web
application .
Simple, web-based application management
console.
Developers can focus on application logic, no
need to worry about hardware ,system
administration, scalability etc.
Support Java, Python, and Go.


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0. Preparation
1. Create a Google Web Application
Project
2. Debug, Run and Deploy
3. Interaction with User
4. Use Cloud Database
5. Pricing

0.1. Sign up a Google App Engine account:
 https://appengine.google.com/start

0.2. Download App Engine SDK
 http://code.google.com/appengine/downloads.ht
ml

0.3. For Java/Eclipse users, it is recommended
to download Eclipse Plugins to build, debug
and deploy your application.
 http://code.google.com/eclipse/docs/download.ht
ml
You need to login to your gmail
account to see this page. Sometimes,
your xxx@email.arizona.edu account
does not work. If so, sign up a new one.
This is your application ID,
write it down.

Steps 0.2 and 0.3 can
be combined in Eclipse:



Help->Install New
Software
Type
https://dl.google.com/e
clipse/plugin/3.7 in the
“Work with” and press
Enter.
Then choose the
required packages and
download them.
These are required.
Others are optional

Now you should be abele to create
a Google AppEngine project in
Eclipse
New->Web Application Project

Type the project name and package
you like, then choose the Google
SDKs you want to use. Typically you
only need ‘Use Google App Engine’
for your SDK.
src/ includes all
source files for
your application.
Java source codes
META-INF/ includes other
configuration files
war/ includes all
the files that are
deployed and
actually used on
the server.
Images, data, HTML
and JSP files are put
directly under /war
folder.
WEB-INF/ includes used
libraries, compiled classes
and configuration files.

In WEB-INF folder, there are
two configuration files.
o appengine-web.xml
o web.xml

The first five lines of appengine-web.xml looks like
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<appengine-web-app xmlns="http://appengine.google.com/ns/1.0">
<application>your application ID</application>
<version>1</version>
</appengine-web-app>
Don’t forget to add your registered application ID between
<appliction> tags.
 Web.xml is SUPER IMPORTANT. It is mainly responsible for
mapping URIs to your servlet classes and web pages (Examples are
provided later.)


Eclipse plugin has already created a Hello World
example for you. You can directly run your
project and test if it works.
 Right click on the project folder-> Debug As Web
Application.

In Debug mode, Google App Engine will create a
server on your local machine, and your project
will run on that local server.
 If it is running successfully, the console will display a line like:
If you use Eclipse, the server is running at http://localhost:8888/
 You can open a web browser and paste the link above to test you
project.

When the server is running in debug mode,
any changes to your project files should be
automatically detected by Google App
Engine, so you don’t have to rebuild the
project (but still you need to refresh the
browser to see the changes).
 *Don’t over-trust this statement. When you always encounter the
same error, it is very likely that just rebuilding the project will help you
out.

An exception is web.xml. If you make
changes to it, you must rebuild your project.

When you are satisfied with your application, you can deploy it to the
cloud environment Google provides so that users all over the world have
access to it.

Simply click the
‘Deploy’icon, and
enter your account
information for the
AppEngine Account.

Now you can visit
your application at
http://your-applicationID.appspot.com
Web Pages/ API
User Input
Interface
Output
Your Application
Web Mining
Component
(Server Side
Logic)
Often, you want your application not only to present
static information, but also to interact with users.
 Your system needs to pass user inputs from web
pages to your Java or Python program.
 Here we provide a JSP/Java example of a movie
related web mining application. This example returns
movie’s plot based on the movie name given by users.


Create form_input.jsp, add the following lines between the
<body> </body> tags.
Input a movie name here:
<form action="/processinput" method="post">
<div><input type="textarea" name="moviename" rows="3" cols="60"></div>
<div><input type="submit" value="Submit" /></div>
</form>

When the user visits form_input.jsp. It will show a field for input:

You want to pass the input to your Java Servlet application
(your background program), say, SampleServlet.java

You need to configure web.xml to let the system know how to map the
form submission URI to the appropriate Java class. The following
example shows such a mapping:

http://your application ID.appspot.com/processinput
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd" version="2.5">
<servlet>
<servlet-name>Sample</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>mis510.SampleServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>Sample</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/processinput</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<welcome-file-list>
<welcome-file>index.html</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>
</web-app>
SampleServlet.class


Copy the following code to SampleServlet.java
Use req.getParameter() method to obtain the user input (movie name) and
process it in SampleServlet.java. An external API is used to retrieve the movie’s
plot from web.
package mis510;
import java.io.IOException;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
import myUtility.IMDB_Handler;
public class SampleServlet extends HttpServlet {
public void doPost(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp) throws IOException {
String movieName = req.getParameter("moviename");
//the following code retrieves the input movie’s plot using an external web API
IMDB_Handler imdbAPI=new IMDB_Handler();
try{
String movieID=imdbAPI.convert(movieName); //convert movie name to its IMDB ID.
String result=imdbAPI.getPlot(movieID); //get the movie plot
req.setAttribute("result", result);// the resulting movie plot is saved in a variable “result”
req.getRequestDispatcher("form_input.jsp").forward(req, resp);} //return the user back to
original page
catch (Exception e) {e.printStackTrace();}
}

Here’s a snippet of the API use code. The complete sample code is given
in ‘samplecode.rar’.
public class IMDB_Handler {
static private String EndPoint="http://imdbapi.com/";
public IMDB_Handler(){}
/*
public static String convert(String moviename){} */
public String getPlot(String movieID){
String RESTurl,plot;
RESTurl=EndPoint+"?id="+movieID;
try{
HTTPProxy handler=new HTTPProxy();
String content=handler.GetContent(RESTurl);
JSONObject jobj=new JSONObject(content);
plot=jobj.getString("plot_simple");}
catch(Exception e) {plot=“The API server is currently down.";}
return plot;
}}

Now you can display the results to user by adding a
line to the designated jsp page. In this example, we
use the same jsp page as user input. Now the
form_input.jsp should look like:
<body>
Input a movie name here:
<form action="/processinput" method="post">
<div><input type="textarea" name="moviename" rows="3" cols="60"></div>
<div><input type="submit" value="Submit" /></div>
</form>
<%=request.getAttribute("result") %> <%--add this line to display the value in "result“--%>
</body>

Try it in http://localhost:8888/form_input.jsp

Situations where using cloud database may help:



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Remember user activities.
Store the results of web mining process to speed up next
inquiry.
Upload a large file which is a component of your
application.
….
In next slides we show an example of using Google
Datastore to save and retrieve users’ comments for
movies.

Updating the form_input.jsp to receive user
comments:
<form action="/processinput" method="post">
Input Movie Name Here:
<div><input type="text" name="moviename" rows="3" cols="60"></div>
Input Your Name Here:
<div><input type="text" name="username" rows="3" cols="60"></div>
Type Your Comment Here:
<div><textarea name="comment" rows="3" cols="60"></textarea></div>
<div><input type="submit" value="Submit" /></div>
</form>
Movie Plot: <br>
<%=request.getAttribute("result") %>

4.1.1 Store Comments
 Add this component to SampleServelet.java
 (For complete sample, please refer to samplecode.rar)
//Store the user comments:
Key movieKey = KeyFactory.createKey("MovieComment", movieName);
String content = req.getParameter("comment");
String username = req.getParameter("username");
Date date = new Date();
Entity comment = new Entity("Comment", movieKey);
comment.setProperty("user", username);
comment.setProperty("date", date);
comment.setProperty("content", content);
DatastoreService datastore =
DatastoreServiceFactory.getDatastoreService();
datastore.put(comment);
try {req.getRequestDispatcher("form_input.jsp?moviename="+movieName).forward(req, resp);}
catch (ServletException e) {e.printStackTrace();}
catch (IOException e) {e.printStackTrace();}

4.1.1 Store Comments
 Modify SampleServelet.java as:
 (For complete sample, please refer to samplecode.rar)
package mis510;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Date;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
import com.google.appengine.api.datastore.DatastoreService;
import com.google.appengine.api.datastore.DatastoreServiceFactory;
import com.google.appengine.api.datastore.Entity;
import com.google.appengine.api.datastore.Key;
import com.google.appengine.api.datastore.KeyFactory;
import myUtility.IMDB_Handler;
public class SampleServlet extends HttpServlet {
public void doPost(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp) throws IOException {
String movieName = req.getParameter("moviename");
IMDB_Handler imdbAPI=new IMDB_Handler();
try{
String movieID=imdbAPI.convert(movieName); //convert movie name to its IMDB ID.
String result=imdbAPI.getPlot(movieID); //get the movie plot
req.setAttribute("result", result);// the resulting movie plot is saved in a variable “result”

4.1.1 Store Comments
 Modify SampleServelet.java as (cont’d):
 (For complete sample, please refer to samplecode.rar)
//Store the user comments:
Key movieKey = KeyFactory.createKey("MovieComment", movieName);
String content = req.getParameter("comment");
String username = req.getParameter("username");
Date date = new Date();
Entity comment = new Entity("Comment", movieKey);
comment.setProperty("user", username);
comment.setProperty("date", date);
comment.setProperty("content", content);
DatastoreService datastore =
DatastoreServiceFactory.getDatastoreService();
datastore.put(comment);
req.getRequestDispatcher("form_input.jsp?moviename="+movieName).forward(req, resp);}
catch (Exception e) {e.printStackTrace();}
}
}

4.1.1 Retrieve Comments
 Add this component to form_input.jsp, before <html>
 (For complete sample, please refer to samplecode.rar)
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<%@ page import="java.util.List" %>
<%@ page import="com.google.appengine.api.datastore.DatastoreServiceFactory" %>
<%@ page import="com.google.appengine.api.datastore.DatastoreService" %>
<%@ page import="com.google.appengine.api.datastore.Query" %>
<%@ page import="com.google.appengine.api.datastore.Entity" %>
<%@ page import="com.google.appengine.api.datastore.FetchOptions" %>
<%@ page import="com.google.appengine.api.datastore.Key" %>
<%@ page import="com.google.appengine.api.datastore.KeyFactory" %>

4.1.1 Retrieve Comments
 Add this component to form_input.jsp, inside <body> and </body>.
 (For complete sample, please refer to samplecode.rar)
<%
String movieName = request.getParameter("moviename");
if(movieName==null)
movieName="default";
DatastoreService datastore = DatastoreServiceFactory.getDatastoreService();
Key movieKey = KeyFactory.createKey("MovieComment", movieName);
Query query = new Query("Comment", movieKey).addSort("date", Query.SortDirection.DESCENDING);
List<Entity> comments = datastore.prepare(query).asList(FetchOptions.Builder.withLimit(5));
if (comments.isEmpty()) {
%>
<p>The movie '<%= movieName %>' has no comments posted yet.</p>
<% }
//cont’d
else {
%>
<p>Comments for movie '<%= movieName %>'.</p>
<%
for (Entity comment : comments) {
if (comment.getProperty("user") == null) {
%>
<p>An anonymous person wrote:</p>
<%
} else {
%>
<p><b><%= comment.getProperty("user") %></b> wrote:</p>
<%
}
%>
<blockquote><%= comment.getProperty("content") %></blockquote>
<%
}
}
%>

Advantages of Google Datastore:



Google provides data management capacity for you.
Very Flexible (schemaless)
Option to view & manage the data online


Login to Google App Engine:https://appengine.google.com/, choose
your application-> Datastore Viewer
Disadvantages:
Limit of 1GB free data storage quota, compared to
Amazon EC2(10GB).
 Only for small data object(entity) in Datastore.



To store larger data, Google Blobstore can be used.
http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/java/blobstore/overview.ht
ml
Google App Engine sets a resource usage quota for free application.
Free Quota for Major Resources
Resource
Daily Limit
Frontend Instance Hours
28hr
High Replication Datastore
Storage
1 GB
Datastore Reads
50k ops
Datastore Writes
50k ops
Outgoing Network Traffic
1 GB
Incoming Network Traffic
1 GB
For more details:
https://cloud.google.com/products/app-engine/#pricing
For resource usage exceeding the quota, Google charges at the price rates
below.
Billing Rate for Major Resources
Resource
Rate
Frontend Instance Hours
$0.08/hour
Datastore Amount
$0.18/GB/month
Datastore Reads
$0.06/100k read ops
Datastore Writes
$0.09/100k write ops
Outgoing Network Traffic
$0.12/GB
Incoming Network Traffic
Free

Costs vary greatly depending on different resource
usage. The following table lists a rough estimation
of daily costs for typical apps:
App 1
App 2
App 3
Data store
1GB
10GB
10GB
Bandwidth
in&out
1GB
1GB
5GB
Cost
Free
$5/day
$15/day

Suggestions for reducing cost.
 Login to App Engine Console and set daily budget.
This is the safest way to control
your cost, but resource usage
exceeding this budget will not be
allowed (so your app throw
errors.)
 Reduce instance hours
 Datastore is expensive
 Debug on your local server most of the time (completely
free!). Deploy the full version of your app only during last
weeks of the mis 510.

Applying these suggestions will reduce the cost for
projects.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is
a web service that provides resizable compute
capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make
web-scale computing easier for developers.
simple web service interface
complete control of your computing resources
fast obtain and boot new server instances
quickly scale capacity as your computing
requirements change
 pay only for capacity that you actually use











1. Sign up EC2
2. Launch an Instance
3. Connect to Windows Instance
4. Connect to Unix/Linux Instance
5. Application Example
6. Pricing
7. Resources



Sign up an Amazon EC2 Account:
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/
If you have an Amazon Shopping Account, just use this
account.


Sign in AWS Management Console (choose EC2):
http://aws.amazon.com/console/

A key pair is a security credential similar to a password, which you
use to securely connect to your instance after it's running.



Amazon Linux
Windows Server 2008 with SQL Server
Red Hat/Ubuntu/Debian Linux



Just like choosing a virtual machine
You can choose 64-bit or 32-bit machines
Prices for different machines are different
Create rules to get access to instance
For a windows server, we need HTTP port 80, MS SQL port 1433, Remote Desktop port
3389 and HTTP 8080 (for Tomcat).
For Linux, we need SSH to login (to use PuTTY and WinSCP).
Go to the AWS
Management
Console and locate
the instance on the
Instances page.
 Right-click the
instance and select
Get Windows
Password.





Click “Elastic IP” in “Navigation”
Click “Allocate New Address”
Associate Address to your instance
Elastic Address is desirable resource. You should release the address, if
you don’t want to associate it to any instance. Otherwise, Amazon will
charge you money!
Stop = Shutdown
computer
Reboot = Restart
computer
Terminate = throw
away your computer!
You can monitor your
instance in AWS
management console
Install PuTTY on your
windows machine
 Start PuTTYgen (e.g.,
from the Start menu,
click All Programs >
PuTTY > PuTTYgen).
 Click Load and browse
to the location of the
private key file that you
want to convert (e.g.,
hello.pem) into
hello.ppk.
 Save hello.ppk
somewhere.





Open PuTTY
Use Public DNS as
hostname
Use root (Red-Hat),
bitnami (Ubuntu),
ec2-user (Amazon
Linux) as username
Click SSH->Auth to
load the.ppk file





Install WinSCP on
your windows
machine
Use Public DNS as
hostname
Use root (Red Hat),
bitnami (Ubuntu),
ec2-user (Amazon
Linux) as username
Load .ppk file (get it
from PuTTYgen)
Click login
Use a Micro On-Demand Instances
Run a Windows Server 2008 with elastic IP
SQL Server 2008 R2 is ready
Install Firefox, Java JRE, Tomcat 7.0 (server), Eclipse
IDE, Dropbox (for data transmission).
 Deploy my web application on this server (run a
Tomcat server on Eclipse)!
 Get access to web application via HTTP port 8080.












Pay only for what you use. There is no minimum fee.
See Details: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
Estimate your monthly bill using AWS Simple
Monthly Calculator.
You might pay for:
EC2 instances
Elastic IP
Data Transfer (In and Out)
Amazon EBS Storage

Amazon EC2 provides customers three
different purchasing models that give you the
flexibility to optimize your costs.
On-demand Instances: pay for compute capacity by the hour
Reserved Instances: one-time payment (1 year term, 3 year
term), cheaper than on-demand instance
 Spot instances: bid for unused Amazon EC2 capacity (can be
every cheap if having good bidding strategy)



For a typical MIS 510 project, you might pay
$20-30 in total. You can prepare codes on local
platforms, and just deploy project code on
EC2 for 1-2 weeks. To save running hours, you
can shut down EC2 in the night.
Notice: Price also varies in different regions



Documentations and tutorials:
http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/
http://aws.amazon.com/documentation/ec2/

Google App Engine main page:

http://code.google.com/appengine


Amazon AWS main page:
http://aws.amazon.com/


AL lab’s resource for MIS 510:
http://ai.arizona.edu/mis510/