20131003 eth issue530 large project local run crash 57928654

Most significant feature on this branch vastly improves the performance of opening a 200 point database, and also reduces the amount of memory used by PAT. 

Unfortunately, this branch is not a full fix for #530 and #540. In addition to this work, https://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/58559356 should help, but is too invasive to do right before the release.