Google AppEngine

The war/ directory uses the WAR standard layout for bundling web applications. (WAR archive files are not yet supported by the SDK.) The Eclipse plugin uses this directory for running the development server, and for deploying the app to App Engine. When Eclipse builds your project, it creates a directory named classes/ in war/WEB-INF/, and puts compiled class files here. Eclipse also copies non-source files found in src/ to war/WEB-INF/classes/, including META-INF/ and the log4j.properties and logging.properties files. The final contents of the war/ directory make up your application for testing and deployment. For details about the new project that the plugin creates, see the Getting Started Guide.

Here is the approach I would probably take unless you have many hundreds of child tasks. I would keep a list of keys of all children of each project/task. (You can then do a db.get and get all immediate children with single call) and each child has a reference to it's parent. In addition in each item keep a list of all parents keys back to the root. That way you can search for all children in part of the tree/subtree (This approach is especially useful if you have multiple child types) as back ref sets are kind specific. Keep a  running count of complete children at each level, rather than trying to calculate the current state in a single big function,  (keep these subsidiary values up to date through tasks)

Because A is the entity group parent of B, the key of an instance of B must contain information about its entity group parent instance of A. Instead of using b.key.getId() in   // We cannot retrieve this object. Why?   B newB = pm.getObjectById(B.class,b.key.getId()); you might care to use the KeyFactory.Builder class as detailed in "http://code.google.com/intl/en/appengine/docs/java/datastore/ creatinggettinganddeletingdata.html#Creating_and_Using_Keys" in order to build a key instance which contains information about both your B instance and its parental A instance.

'm guessing your tests were run locally because the counter in the local datastore does indeed have datastore scope.  The scope of the counter in the prod datastore, however, is parent key + kind.  This is described here: http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/java/datastore/creatinggettinga... If it's important to you that the scope of the generated ids match between dev and and prod please file an issue.

                StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();                 KeyRange range = ds.allocateIds("a", 2);                 for (Key key : range) {                         sb.append("\n a " + key.toString());                 }                 range = ds.allocateIds("b", 2);                 for (Key key : range) {                         sb.append("\n b " + key.toString());                 }                 Key parentKey = KeyFactory.createKey("c", 1);                 sb.append("\n c " + parentKey.toString());                 range = ds.allocateIds(parentKey, "d", 2);                 for (Key key : range) {                         sb.append("\n d " + key.toString());                 }                 System.out.println(sb.toString());

The URL I posted earlier in the thread explains it, but here's a little bit more detail: A parent entity plus a kind defines an id-space, so entities with the same parent and the same kind are guaranteed to have unique ids.  For example, if you have an Entity with Parent:A Kind: Person Id: 10 you are guaranteed that no other entity with Parent A and Kind Person will be assigned an Id of 10.  However, an entity with a different Parent and Kind Person or an entity with Parent A and a different Kind _can_ be assigned an Id of 10.  The datastore pre-allocates batches of ids across multiple servers under-the-hood, so you can't make any assumptions about the Id that will get assigned in terms of contiguousness.  The only safe assumption is that the id will be unique for that Parent/Kind combination.

public void setProperty(java.lang.String propertyName, java.lang.Object value) Sets the property named, propertyName, to value. As the value is stored in the datastore, it is converted to the datastore's native type. This may include widening, such as converting a Short to a Long. All Collections are prone to losing their sort order and their original types as they are stored in the datastore. For example, a TreeSet may be returned as a List from getProperty(java.lang.String), with an arbitrary re-ordering of elements. Overrides any existing value for this property, whether indexed or unindexed. Note that Blob and Text property values are never indexed by the built-in single property indexes. To store other types without being indexed, use #setUnindexedProperty. Parameters:value - may be one of the supported datatypes, a heterogenous Collection of one of the supported datatypes, or an UnindexedValue wrapping one of the supported datatypes. Throws: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException - If the value is not of a type that the data store supports.

Every entity has a key that is unique over all entities in App Engine. A complete key includes several pieces of information, including the application ID, the kind, and an entity ID. (Keys also contain information about entity groups; see Transactions for more information.) An object's key is stored in a field on the instance. You identify the primary key field using the @PrimaryKey annotation. The app can provide the ID portion of the key as a string when the object is created, or it can allow the datastore to generate a numeric ID automatically. The complete key must be unique across all entities in the datastore. In other words, an object must have an ID that is unique across all objects of the same kind and with the same entity group parent (if any). You select the desired behavior of the key using the type of the field and annotations. If the class is used as a "child" class in a relationship, the key field must be of a type capable of representing an entity group parent: either a Key instance, or a Key value encoded as a string. See Transactions for more information on entity groups, and Relationships for more information on relationships. Tip: If the app creates a new object and gives it the same string ID as another object of the same kind (and the same entity group parent), saving the new object overwrites the other object in the datastore. To detect whether a string ID is already in use prior to creating a new object, you can use a transaction to attempt to get an entity with a given ID, then create one if it doesn't exist. See Transactions. There are 4 types of primary key fields:

Entity is the fundamental unit of data storage. It has an immutable identifier (contained in the Key) object, a reference to an optional parent Entity, a kind (represented as an arbitrary string), and a set of zero or more typed properties.

setProperty public void setProperty(java.lang.String propertyName, java.lang.Object value) Sets the property named, propertyName, to value. As the value is stored in the datastore, it is converted to the datastore's native type. This may include widening, such as converting a Short to a Long. All Collections are prone to losing their sort order and their original types as they are stored in the datastore. For example, a TreeSet may be returned as a List from getProperty(java.lang.String), with an arbitrary re-ordering of elements. Overrides any existing value for this property, whether indexed or unindexed. Note that Blob and Text property values are never indexed by the built-in single property indexes. To store other types without being indexed, use #setUnindexedProperty. Parameters:value - may be one of the supported datatypes, a heterogenous Collection of one of the supported datatypes, or an UnindexedValue wrapping one of the supported datatypes. Throws: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException - If the value is not of a type that the data store supports.