Various Heroku related questions

[da...@nextoken.com]

I'm new to web2py but I've basically read through the book and checked the forum.

I understand pythonanywhere is the preferred way to deploy web2py in the cloud. However Heroku seems to be more generous on free plans, which is good for me to start. I would also like to avoid GAE since my apps will be facing Chinese users (for political reasons Google stuff got blocked from time to time in China)

So I've followed the online web2py book to deploy a tested good local web2py directory to Heroku.
It's running and I solved a few issues by checking the forum.

Here's some issues & questions I haven't figure out.

1) I have a local test app (the image example) committed to Heroku. Before I make the DAL to get_db change, the app still seems working on Heroku. Does that mean web2py works on SQLite db on Heroku before the filesystem is cleaned? (I know this is not reliable, just curious what happened)

2) I could use the IDE to change code and actually save edited code. However the "Last Saved On" field soon returns to red "Communication error...". On local instance, the code is supposed to be written on FS. Where is the Heroku edited code saved? I tried "git pull heroku master" and nothing got pulled down. If the code edit on IDE doesn't save and can't pull back to local workspace, does that mean the IDE on Heroku is useless? Does that mean if I want to use services like Heroku without permanent FS, I should always work on local copy and commit?

3) Suppose I don't care about the code sync issue. Is there a simple solution to sync data created on Heroku to local PostgreSQL DB?