@seanh I've tested replacing clean_db() and init_db() with

```
    for table in reversed(model.meta.metadata.sorted_tables):
        model.meta.Session.execute(table.delete())
    model.meta.Session.commit()
```
which I stole from a [stackoverflow question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4763472/sqlalchemy-clear-database-content-but-dont-drop-the-schema). It basically just truncates the tables instead of recreating it in the same way a [django transactiontestcase](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/topics/testing/#django.test.TransactionTestCase) works. For me it sped up the tests from 54.696s to 28.531s