You only need to inherit from utils TestCase if you are using asserts from that test case. So it doesn't really matter.
I did have a quick look at the PR and I have a concern over the iterator in daf_persistence. I can't actually test the DbStorage_1.py usage of next because the tests skip for me even if I'm on lsst-dev. I need to know how the end of the iterator is triggered from C++. It might be that I have to intercept some other condition and translate it to StopIteration. Steve Pietrowicz do you know what machine I have to be on for the DbStorage_1.py test to run or is the server not actually active any more?
Jenkins py2 passes. Need the cat package to be updated before testing py3