`user` and `profilefield` table questions -- planning a hack

[PMichaud]

I'm writing a pretty complex program for my website that I want to be partially integrated with the forums (when people register on my site, they'll be registered for the forum as well). This turned out to be more complex than I thought it would be because I need some data for the site that isn't in the vb.user table.

I'd like to put all the data into the vb tables so I can use the code from there for things like profile editing and registering (otherwise I'd have to hack the code quite a bit and/or have two different places to register and two different places to edit player data, which is unacceptable).

No problem, you say, just add the extra data to the profilefields table and you're golden. Well yeah, sort of. Some of the data are relational indices which shouldn't be editable or viewable, some should be viewable but not editable (like post count), and some of it is viewable and editable (like first name). Obviously the viewable and editable data is going to be fine for profilefields, but the other two (one or the other, I think) looks like it'll give me problems.

I've tried making a field uneditable but not private, but it still doesn't show up in the profile -- should it? Also, would an uneditable and private field work for things like my relational indices data?

Lastly, while I'm here: when I display the user profile I know it's all controlled by XML, and uses arrays to hold various profile values, but what's the best way to get some mySQL data while displaying a profile? For example, I have a table I use to store group data, and members can be art of the groups (unrelated to vb usergroups). In the profilefields table I'd have the groupid, say 46. I don't want to display "46" in the profile, I want it to go to the groups table and look up the name of group 46, and display that. The basic code for that is simple, but at what point should that happen along the profile display pipeline?

Thanks!