I have developed a fairly complex web app using "normal" Django, not the non-rel flavour. For database storage I use Google Cloud SQL which is basically MySQL in the cloud. It works pretty good. There are some points to consider:
- Google Cloud SQL has no "free plan", so it will incur a cost on your project.
- Normal Django for GAE is currently at version 1.4 and lags a bit behind development which is if memory serves me right at 1.6. There is a version 1.5 of Django that comes with the GAE SDK but I did not get that work (I did not put any particular effort in it, just changed the Django version in my app.yaml file and it crashed).
As for the first bullet, there's now also a comparable product available from Amazon. I have not yet looked into it (I believe they do offer a free plan which might be interesting to try out), nor compared prices but that might be an alternative should Google Cloud SQL be too expensive. My yearly cost for Google Cloud SQL are between £150 and £200 which is not too bad.
My reason for choosing normal Django over non-rel was basically twofold:
- The non-rel project appears abandoned.
- The non-rel product is "crippled" in functionality according to some of the docs I read about it and you will not be able to use all of the pre-baked goodies of Django.
I have been working on this project for 7 months now and I find Django on GAE with Google Cloud SQL very stable and productive environments. FWIW, I use PyCharm which has a one click deployment feature which makes deploying my product an absolute breeze. I've been working on IT projects with various technologies for quite some time and the combination of PyCharm, Python, Django, GAE and Google Cloud SQL would be at the top of my list of productive environments.
Of course there are other Python frameworks to consider, like Flask which allow more of a best-of-breed approach but I have no experience with them.
Hope this helps.