Typica 1.5 has just been released.

This version brings a lot of new stuff like:

• EC2 enhancements: support for EU and regions,
• SDB enhancements: support for SQL like grammar (select, etc.),
• Bug fixes…
• … and of course the FPS API we’ve been working on.

As Amazon announced plenty of FPS Quick Starts, you now don’t have any excuse for not using the FPS API when developing in Java.

The support for the Amazon FPS API in Typica has been updated in Subversion a few days ago. The support for this API should be available anytime soon within the next release of Typica.

As the FPS API is quite rich and offer lots of different use, feedback is critical in order to test and qualify properly the added support.

We’ve just published a few minutes ago a tutorial explaining how to use Amazon FPS from the excellent Typica library.

Let us know if we should keep working on it and enrich it.

We hope this will help a bit the FPS community.

I have added a lot of code into the SVN repository in order to provide some experimental support for Amazon FPS.

The current version (revision 186) supports most of the operations you need when you manipulate:

• single use tokens,
• recurring tokens,
• post paid tokens,
• edit tokens.

Basically the current API allow you to generate URL for the CBUI  pipelines, extract information from the request when FPS returns to your site and all the account related APIs, like Account Activity and such.

This code is still in experimental status and I’d like to gather some initial feedback.

What’s left to be done is (ETA: end of the month):

• multi use tokens support,
• prepaid tokens support,
• IPN support.

Update: the slides have been published! I finally did not demonstrate the FPS webapp and added more fresh content on the presentation. The demo part of the talk has also been improved a lot as it is now even easier to use Elastic Grid. The webcast is supposed to be provided at some point. I’ll update this blog post when the video is available.

I will be doing a talk like the one we did for JavaOne 08, except this time the demo will a bit shorten compared to the one we did at JavaOne. I will also demonstrate the Amazon FPS webapp we’ve been working on (more about this to come soon on this blog).

Our talk How Can Amazon EC2 Benefit from the Elastic Grid Solution? is scheduled on September 18th (2nd day of the JavaZone conference) at 3:45pm in Lab 6.

If you are in Oslo for JavaZone this year, let me know. I would be pleased to see you and discuss anything like AWS, Elastic Grid, or even for drinking a beer :-p

Entries about Amazon Web Services:

• Configuring Amazon EC2 for RAID
• Amazon’s cloud computing service fuels startup’s launch
• Typica supports DevPay LS APIs: I hope the FPS APIs will be proposed soon…

Entries about Amazon Web Services:

• sdb-browser: Amazon SimpleDB data browser/editor.
• FPyS: an Amazon FPS client for Python.
• Dekoh: Amazon EC2 case study, via AWS Blog.
• Articles about using Amazon S3 persistent Ruby objects and an extended version using Amazon SDB.
• Interesting article explaining why you should load CPU instead of storage.
• Video screencast for Getting Started with Amazon S3 using the S3 Fox Firefox plugin.

Entries about Amazon Web Services:

• Amazon S3 Copy Proposal: at last… This will allow to copy, rename, move, and relocate (from US to EU or the contrary) buckets without having to download/upload.
• Amazon FPS: How to create a Marketplace Application
• Amazon FPS: Pay Now Widget Module for OsCommerce
• Monetize your Amazon S3 objects using Amazon FPS
• Hadoop AMI and its associated tutorial Running Hadoop MapReduce on Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3
• Taking Massive Distributed Computing to the Common Man – Hadoop on Amazon EC2/S3
• Hadoop on Demand: provisioning of Hadoop on a virtual cluster, but not EC2…

O’Reilly should release a new book called Programming Amazon Web Services: S3, EC2, SQS, FPS, and SimpleDB (Programming) in March 2008.

This book looks really promising. I’ll buy the book as soon as possible and will publish a review of it when done reading it.

Here is the book description:

Building on the success of its storefront and fulfillment services, Amazon now allows businesses to “rent” computing power, data storage and bandwidth on its vast network platform. This book demonstrates how developers working with small- to mid-sized companies can take advantage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) such as the Simple Storage Service (S3), Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Simple Queue Service (SQS), Flexible Payments Service (FPS), and SimpleDB to build web-scale business applications.

With AWS, Amazon offers a new paradigm for IT infrastructure: use what you need, as you need it, and pay as you go. Programming Web Services explains how you can access Amazon’s open APIs to store and run applications, rather than spend precious time and resources building your own. With this book, you’ll learn all the technical details you need to:

• Store and retrieve any amount of data using application servers, unlimited data storage, and bandwidth with the Amazon S3 service
• Buy computing time using Amazon EC2’s interface to requisition machines, load them with an application environment, manage access permissions, and run your image using as many or few systems as needed
• Use Amazon’s web-scale messaging infrastructure to store messages as they travel between computers with Amazon SQS
• Leverage the Amazon FPS service to structure payment instructions and allow the movement of money between any two entities, humans or computers
• Create and store multiple data sets, query your data easily, and return the results using Amazon SimpleDB.
• Scale up or down at a moment’s notice, using these services to employ as much time and space as you need

Whether you’re starting a new online business, need to ramp up existing services, or require an offsite backup for your home, Programming Web Services gives you the background and the practical knowledge you need to start using AWS. Other books explain how to build web services. This book teaches businesses how to take make use of existing services from an established technology leader.