App Engine - Import data

I'm unsure of a good way to import data that I have from an old SQL-based application into app engine (big table). I'm very confused though I'm sure I'm missing something simple.

The data is not just a simple spread sheet. It consists of customers, appointments, and a few other things. They're all tied together by keys, so that adds a little to the complexity.

I realize there is a bulk uploader, that seemed more for someone with administrative access though and I was hoping to come up with a solution that would work for a user.

It seems that if I could upload a file and do it that way, that would work, but there is a 30 second limit on processes, this would likely exceed the 30 second time limit if adding a few thousand records. Maybe I could use the task queue? I think this may allow processes that take more than 30 seconds, but then I think I'd have issues synchronizing with the development server?

Its not that I don't know how to开发者_运维知识库 do this at all, but its that I really have no clue as to a way that will involve the least amount of headache.

From what I understand (and I am a beginner as well), App Engine uses 'denormalized' data. This means there are really no such things as 'joins'. There are some things that can be done to connect tables (property settings I believe) but I have no idea how they work for certain - I haven't tried.

I believe your only option would be to build scripts and rules to convert your SQL data to a denormalized state and then store that in App Engine. If you have to have two way sync, then this could get messy real quick!

See this article: http://blog.notdot.net/2010/10/Modeling-relationships-in-App-Engine

or maybe this post https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/52/in-google-app-engine-what-is-the-most-effective-many-to-many-join-model