AWSQS: Bug - Key use before registration blocked use of key after registration (FIXED)

[C Sowa]

Sometimes prospective new users come to AWSQS and try to use the
service without registering an Id/Key pair. This of course doesn't
work, and results in a "key not found" error. And in most cases,
these folks eventually find out that they need to register these
values, and they decide not to, and all is fine.

However, there was one recent case where someone did this, but went
ahead and decided to register in order to use the service. Now,
here's what AWSQS does: it caches an unregistered look-up so that it
doesn't have to hit the database again trying to find a non-existent
key. This is because database access is a relatively expensive
resource in GAE. The thing that AWSQS was supposed to do - and didn't
- when the corresponding Id/Key pair was subsequently registered, was
to replace this cached look-up "miss" with the registered value.
Results: I'm sure this person was very frustrated when all of their
properly formatted requests just would not work, returning "key not
found" errors instead.

This was one of those logic errors that doesn't throw an exception,
but instead shows up erroneously as a usage error. At this point in
AWSQS's lifecycle I am checking in fairly frequently throughout the
day, trying to catch exactly these sorts of problems - hopefully in a
timely enough manner so as not to impact operations or user
satisfaction. I'm afraid in this case, I was not successful.

Credit is due this person for helping improve things for future
users. It's an expensive way to fix an app.

[Piper]

It sure is. I just had a hard time doing my "programming" in Yahoo
Pipes (Really!) with the Amazon API, and it suddenly started giving me
503's. I really thought I messed up, until I saw that I was just over-
requesting.