Also thanks for mentioning my bot as "the original" since it is true that has been copied/used by many others and sometimes without even share the credit.@cardrunner nice post! I have the some opinion on botting... some are bad, some are useful to the game and its economy.
I just wanted to add that the local db solution was intended to be just a backup to the more comprehensive solution I built originally which is a proper database with API. unfortunately as everyone like free stuff, the public server is often overloaded and therefore I kept the local database solution which works as you described.
But I also kept it opensource not only for transaprency but in the way that any one can use and tweak it as they wish... hopefully sharing the improvements with the community :)