I have a 3rd party database of content, which gets appended/updated on a daily basis. I'd like to structure a site, which in part is dependent on that content, but "decorated" with my own content and a facility for user comments. The rest of the site is pretty blog-ish - i.e. the rest of the site is certainly a good fit for MT.

My instinct is to keep blogging separate from the part of the site which pivots on the 3rd party database - i.e. use MT4 for the blog bits and use something home-grown for the decorated 3rd party content, but I wonder if MT4 can be used to layer content on top of that 3rd party content?

The alternatives are (I guess):

• Importing the 3rd party content into MT's CMS
• Linking or somehow associating external content with entries in MT
• Not using MT and not benefiting from integrated user comments

Forgive me for not having MT/blogging vocabulary. I'm a new to this world. I am however OK writing Perl and/or PHP to achieve the end result and I'm willing to get my hands dirty, getting there.

If import is the route to take, I need to be able to update the imported data programmatically. If linking is the route to take, I need it to look integrated in the end result.

Can anyone offer advice for the best approach?