Does local GAE read and write to a local datastore file on the hard drive while it's running?
How the datastore reads and writes its underlying files varies - the standard datastore is read on startup, and written progressively, journal-style, as the app modifies data. The SQLite backend uses a SQLite database.
You shouldn't have to care, though - neither backend is designed for robustness in the face of failure, as they're development backends. You shouldn't be modifying or deleting the underlying files, either.
I have just noticed that when I have a running instance of my GAE application, there nothing happens with the datastore file when I add or remove entries using Python code or in admin console. I can even remove the file and still have all data safe and sound in admin area and accessible from code. But when I restart my application, all data obviously goes away and I have a blank datastore. So, the question - does GAE reads all data from the file only when it starts and then deals with it in the memory, saving the data after I stop the application? Does it make any requests to the datastore file when the application is running? If it doesn't save anything to the file while it's running, then, possibly, data may be lost if the application unexpectedly stops? Please make it clear for me if you know how it works in this aspect.