BrendanC: Thanks for those resources! I ended up gutting that functionality for now, but those are some great read :)! The non- relational database backend requires some "unlearning" of SQL database practices... New challenge for a new environment.
I also have not gotten a local shell working with GAE; it would be really helpful for interactive development if it existed! howesc: I'm using the latest stable version (1.99.4). While your method works as a work around of sorts, it's far too crippled by GAE's non-relational nature. I would potentially need dozens of queries in order to fetch all possible mootGroups since GAE limits IN to only 30 items per query! So I simply had to de-normalize the database and gut the feature I was working on from before. Thank you both for your helpful replies, I'll definitely be asking more questions as I hobble along ;)!
