Quoting Larry Garfield <larry@garfieldtech.com>:
So, I toss the brain-teaser out there: Is there a good way to have my nodes and import them too, or are these cases where nodes are simply the wrong tool and the direct-import-and-cache mechanisms described above are the optimal solutions?
Not that I've found and I've spent several hours recently researching this. Chris Mellor and I have begun collaborating on this issue here http://portallink.linkmatics.com/gdf and have development staging here http://datafeed.progw.org. Help is welcome, we want to be able to feed all types of external data. Goals are being established and documented on the http://portallink.linkmatics.com/gdf pages. *Note* we are aware of all the existing modules and API and our plans are to use the existing things as well as create what is missing. I've found http://drupal.org/project/feedparser which will accept RSS, RDF or ATOM feeds and create nodes or aggregated lists. I am successfully using that module with a change documented in issue http://drupal.org/node/169865 at http://give-me-an-offer.com. Earnie