SCORM 1.7.x to o 1.8.1 upgrade requires huge memory

Enviromnent:
Moodle 1.7.x with about 200 users and 5 courses. Each course has it SCORM activiry with about 150-200 attempts each.
php.ini with memory_limit set to 32MB, beyond the minimum Moodle memory requirment

Problem:
when trying to upgrade to 1.7.1, all modules upgrades smootly except SCORM, which tries to allocate about 96MB of memory for php.

Workaround:
temporarily increase the memeory_limit of php to 128MB or more. This workaround cannot work for those people who can't access the php.ini.

Should probably better to solve the problem allowing an upgrade needing lesser memory.