Fix backend tests so they complete in CI

Goals

  1. Fix the memory leak so the full test suite actually finishes
  • try to remove the force exit and instead detect open handles
  • make sure individual test suites close themselves
  1. Parallelize the tests so the memory usage is spread out (and they run faster)
  • make sure tests don't READ or WRITE anything in the db besides what they instantiated

If the issue title can be accomplished with just #1 then we're good otherwise (or if you have more time) try 2

Tasks

  • Code review
  • Merge to main

Smoke test

  • CI test runners complete and pass
Edited by Fern Sanchez