some database interaction improvements

removing the operation-id may not actually be an improvement ... it is a
simplification, though.  However it requires us to load all the rows into
python and then send them back to the database instead of only loading them.
I thought removing the operation-id from the in-use table would be a win and
maybe it is but not for the reason I thought - sqlite3 emits the same code
whether you do `in [foo]` or `in (select x from [foo])` as far as I can tell.

Still, I like the simplification so we'll go with it for now.