[support] Integrating a large, given Database into Drupal

[Bastiaan Zapf]

Hello, I'm new on this list. I've got a question about Drupal.

There is a large, existing database of documents (about 300.000 right at
the moment, but other databases of comparable dimension might be added).
This database is to be "integrated" into drupal somehow, so that Users
could comment on documents, add new ones, rate them etc.

The database contains not only document data, but also a wealth of
metadata (hierarchical and causal relations, timestamps, versioning,
authorship information, several distinct categories of documents - and
some more).

While this all sounds a lot like Drupal nodes already, i fear that just
converting every document to a node would lose some of the
metainformation and possibly break some features of drupal due to sheer
number of documents.

Would it be possible to have Drupal access that database directly
instead of "nodes"? That way we'd probably save a lot of hassle.

Would that be possible using a module?


Any help appreciated,

    Basti