After some development with the Calendar API, I ran into the mysterious Google Calendar Quota. It appears that after an undisclosed number of transactions in an undisclosed amount of time, all of the Calendars associated with a user shut down for an undisclosed period of time. There are rumors that this has something to do with 5000 events per day, but numerous observers have noted that the shutdown lasts for multiple days. Nobody seems to report much longer than a week, but they may just have given up.
The most plausible explanation I have seen is a posting from January 2007 (!)(http://groups.google.com/group/google-calendar-help-dataapi/ browse_thread/thread/85ccfde70c57885f/2cc1ab3d255e977b? lnk=gst&q=quota#2cc1ab3d255e977b) suggesting that it is the total amount of data in the calendar, INCLUDING DELETED EVENTS that have not yet been garbage collected, that triggers the quota, and that the garbage collection runs about once a week, which would explain why it can take up to two weeks for the quota to be reset. That would also explain why it is usually developers (testing our posting and deletion code) and users just getting started with syncing their calendars, requiring postings and deletions to get it right, who run into this problem. Or again, maybe everyone is just giving up. I personally believe that, as a private company, Google has the right to any quota or limitation on its services that it wants to impose. My problem is that we developers only find out about the quota AFTER we have developed to the interface and start getting various 403 errors! The problem is not that there is a quota, but that it is a SECRET quota. To not disclose such a significant problem (and potential source of technical support calls) to the developers prior to the decision as to whether to develop to Google's Calendar API seems poorly aligned with Google's standards of integrity. In contrast, see the warnings Google gives users before setting up CALDAV (http://www.google.com/support/ calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=99357) If Google does not wish to disclose the details about the quota, perhaps a statement like: "Before you develop your application to the Google Calendar API, you should be aware that there are usage limitations on Google Calendars. At any time, your users' calendars may be shut down for a period of up to two weeks. If that occurs, your users will not be able to use any of their Google Calendars for up to two weeks. If you and your users cannot accept this limitation, perhaps you should look for another solution." On a more serious note, how exactly does Google suggest we broach this problem with our users? What do we tell our technical support people to say when the users call to tell us that all of their Google Calendars are now broken since they started using our software? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Calendar Data API" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-calendar-help-dataapi?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
