Christmas wish list to Google Cloud
I was dealing with Google Cloud Issue Tracker a few days ago and looking at all those open issues inspired me to collect the most voted features and present them as a Christmas wish list to Google Cloud.
Of course, one could loosen up, dream, and wish, for example, for no downtime/outages, no network transfer charges, horizontally scalable SQL database (wait that already exists), but I would like to keep my feet on the ground, so I find it more practical to look at what people already want.
So this isn’t exactly my wish list but “ours”.
Few notes: Issue Tracker is the official tool to report bugs as well as new feature requests, an interest in the concrete issue is based on the number of the stars. In most cases, users are also commenting on issues by writing +1 and with that expressing support. I pulled a list of open feature requests with the most votes (stars). Each feature request contains a title, description, creation date, status/description, and a number of stars.
I was using this filter in Issue Tracker: -status:(closed | fixed | obsolete) type:(bug | feature_request | internal_cleanup | process | vulnerability | privacy_issue) componentid:187065+ votecount>100
You need to log in to Issue Tracker, in order to see the details of a concrete issue, so I put most important here.
Top 15 feature requests.
1. Web Sockets API (for App Engine)
“It would be great to have Web Sockets”. Created in 2009–12–18, it asks simply for support of Web Sockets. As of today, this is partially possible with App Engine Flex or Cloud Run, but not App Engine Standard. 1017 stars
2. Alarm notification based on rules (DataStudio)
“Ability to set up alarms when the data has changed, for example traffic (or other metric in a dashboard) has dropped by 10% and notify by email”. Interestingly there is no further description nor discussion, only 421 “+1” comments besides 570 stars, total 991 votes.
3. Implement OR operator within Firestore Queries (Firestore)
“I would like to be able to write a query which is the equivalent of the following SQL: SELECT * From Posts WHERE author = “tim” OR status = “PUBLISHED”, which would retrieve all of tim’s Posts or all published posts”. As one of the latest comments mentions: Google is very clear about what Firestore can and cannot do. In other words nobody says it won’t be possible in the future, but not now. 456 stars + 15 “+1”, total 471 votes.
4. Change region/zone (for App Engine)
“Now that we can create a new project and set the region for App Engine, it would be nice to be able to change the region for existing projects. The only option now is to migrate all data (Cloud Storage/Datastore) to a new project which is very cumbersome.” No updates of ETA for some time. Number #2 feature request for App Engine. 364 stars and 69 “+1”, total 433 votes.
5. Query parameters in the BigQuery UI
“Hi, I didn’t find add variable like mysql. Can you add?” Created on 2016–03–09. Latest official comment from Google on 2021–07–22: To all affected customers, please note that the BigQuery engineering team is aware of this feature request, as well as its popularity, and any update on its progress will be given through this medium. 355 stars and 71 “+1”, total 426 votes.
6. Extension request: timescaledb (Cloud SQL)
“Hi, I would like to request the addition of the timescaledb postgres extension (https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb) for storing timeseries data in Cloud SQL.” Created on 2017–08–11. Latest comment from Google 2021–09–01: This feature request is still on our engineering team’s backlog and future updates will be posted on this ticket, but please note that it is not possible to provide an ETA for the implementation of this feature until it is approved. 353 stars and 251 “+1”, total 604 votes.
7. Add unique=True/False to db.property constructor to ensure uniqueness (Datastore)
“Add unique=True/False to db.property constructor to ensure uniqueness across all model entities.” The oldest feature in the list, created on 2008–04–13. No real answer from Google. 352 stars
8. Quota statistics api (App Engine)
“An API to allow developers to query quota statistics. This would allow applications to dynamically disable resource heavy features when the site is under high load. Secondly if load became too high the application could completely shut down itself down serving a static page that fit with the applications styling and layout.” Created in 2008–08–20, is also somewhat a relic since from 2017–12–24 there are no updates or comments from users. A candidate for obsolete. 349 stars
9. transpose rows and columns in tables (Datastudio)
“1) It would be great to have a toggle in the Tables features that allows you to swap columns and rows. 2) I want to be able to report multiple metrics over time with each column as a unit of time (similar to how time series charts present data, but in tabular form. 3) It will allow us to adopt Data Studio across our whole MKTG / SALES org. Currently we report in google docs.” Created in 2017–11–01. No response from Google, still in “New” state. 323 stars and 333 “+1”, total 656 votes.
10. Add a remove logo button and cancel verification in the Oauth (Cloud Console).
“The only available workaround to delete the logo from the consent screen is this and is REALLY sketchy. I would like to see both a button to just remove the logo and another one to cancel the verification process. At the moment there is no integrated method in the console to do this. If you mistakenly add a logo you must follow the verification process. By adding this button I expect to return to the default no image/ no verification notice situation.” Created in 2020–06–11, Google acknowledged the issue and provided url for Stackoverflow workaround, which doesn’t look so user-friendly. 321 stars and 131 “+1”, total 452 votes.
11. IAP on Cloud Storage — backend buckets (Identity-Aware Proxy).
“Currently it is only possible to enable Identity Aware proxy with a load balancer with backend services to Compute Engine instances. However, it is not possible with backend buckets (Google Cloud Storage). It would be nice to add this feature.” 314 stars + 105 “+1”, total 419 votes.
12. Add UNION and FULL OUTER JOIN to the data blending method (DataStudio)
“Currently(Nov. 2018), there is only LEFT OUTER JOIN.” Created 2018–11–22. No official statement. 292 stars and 304 “+1”, total 596 votes.
“It would be great if instances had IPv6 addresses (ideally a /64 or similar that gave multiple addresses e.g. for LXC).” Created in 2013–01–04. There was some progress, but definitely not fully implemented. 283 stars
14. Rotate text box (Datastudio)
“To be able to rotate a text box, report will read better.” Created in 2018–01–15. No response from Google, status “New”, it has 276 stars and 463 “+1”, total 739 votes.
15. Shared data store across multiple appengine accounts (Datastore)
“Some sort of administrator feature where you can allow access to your datastore to other appengine accounts. Let’s say I want both python and java applications but I want them to share the same data store.” Created in 2009–04–14. Not sure if it’s relevant anymore (maybe for legacy apps) since service accounts could be used for access. 268 stars.
Summary
When looking at the list, I see a few groups/patterns here. The longer the feature request exists, the more likely it will have a higher number of stars. Some feature requests are from the stone age i.e. beginnings of the Google Cloud when App Engine was one of the few products available on Google Cloud and feel more like a relic now.
The second bigger group represents Data Studio feature requests, which seems to be a popular product in the sense that users want to have it improved with new features. And the third group is for other products.
What I really wish: do Christmas cleaning and updates of Issue Tracker :)
P.S. I publish every Monday a Newsletter GCP Weekly where I collect news, articles, tutorials, releases related to Google Cloud. To receive new issues in your email box, subscribe on https://www.gcpweekly.com/
