thanks for the cursor tip - didn't think of that. i suspect my problem is some combination of the data being read in together with the references and de-referencing them - i probably end up with lots of memory usage. what i don't understand is, does GAE just flag a spike in ram usage and restart the instance, or does it detect at the end of the controller call that the memory usage is below the threashold? if the former my issue is for sure GAE (or my usage thereof), if the latter that would imply that something is (unexpectedly) holding on to data references past the life of my controller.
guess i need to dig in and do some profiling... cfh
