As a database developer (oracle, Postgres, MySQL, mssql), I can say that there are some distinct advantages to the entity value approach used by drupal. I would not discard it out of hand just because you believe it will take too many tables. For example, it makes queries across content types (e.g. calandars of multiple content types that have different numbers of fields in them) much more performative.
Shameless plug: If you're a database developer and handy with SQL and are planning on building your own custom tables/entities then you might consider using
http://drupal.org/project/forena
Dave
Sent from my iPad