You're guessing the implementation here. It's only a bad idea if you're doing it wrong :) The source/conceptual tables can be normalized, while the join views c

You're guessing the implementation here. It's only a bad idea if you're doing it wrong :) The source/conceptual tables can be normalized, while the join views can be materialized/implemented with Bigtable like sparse columns, which are dynamically updated if the joins happen a lot. Any subsequent join queries hits the views but the source tables. Manual denormalization should be allowed but not required. GAE has nothing to do with this, it's a shared cluster, such that any benchmark is not reliable and comparable. It also has nothing to do with the SQL discussion, as it doesn't support joins either.