gtk.TreeModel.iter_children() method, how often should it be called?

[Gerald Britton <gerald britton gmail com>]

Hi -- I think I have a problem but I'm not sure since I'm relatively
new to the TreeModel and how it works.  Here's the scenario:

I use TreeModel to display rows of data from a database.  Upon
startup, the TreeModel is built and I notice two calls to the
gtk.TreeModel.iter_children() method.  Later, I change some data in
one of the rows.  The next time the TreeModel is built,
gtk.TreeModel.iter_children() is called thousands of times before the
display is refreshed. Oh, the database has less than 50 rows of data
in it!

So, two questions:

1. Is this normal (I hope not!) behavior?

2. What tells the TreeModel to stop calling
gtk.TreeModel.iter_children()?  How does the TM know that it has done
everything it needs to do before displaying the tree?

--
Gerald Britton