Drupal Data Management without Node API
This article was published in the print magazine Drupal Watchdog, Volume 6 Issue 2, , on page 12, by Linux New Media. The magazine was distributed at DrupalCon Dublin, .
In a typical Drupal database, most if not all of the records are inserted into the tables, and potentially modified later, by core and contrib modules using the Node API. However, there may be times when a Drupal developer wants to work with such data but without the performance overhead of the Node system. The Data module is intended to make that possible, because it provides an API for dynamically: creating tables for single-row records; creating tables; defining how they relate to one another; and performing insert, update, and delete operations on them. Fortunately, it is integrated with the powerful Views module.
