i think you may have a valid point depending on the end solution you are after - i mean if you have a specific task in terms of taking stuff from a DB and displaying it on a page then its probably easier to code it with php or something - i had a cms that i wrote in php but i never bothered to do a backend to it and just put stuff in DB with phpmyadmin ..... but you cant expect joe the website owner to do things that way ... but for me joomla is as much about the backend as the front end in that once you get the thing setup it's really easy to add data to ( for everybody non-techies included) ..... but also as said already it really is just a way to organise content until you start to add extensions - and you could probably get an extension to do the type of task you referred to earlier - BTW the joomla website has an extensions section and there really is one for anything you want - in fact as a software guy you might even want to develop some - there is great scope for adding community sections, galleries, shops, blogs etc ..... of course you could develop your own bespoke CMS either

about your catalog question - it seems that virtuemart is the main choice for joomla - i have used it and i think it's fine except for 2 things .... it is pretty hard to do a seemless integration.... that is it works fine out of the box but it doesnt display that well and while this may be ok for a cheapy secondhand engine parts shop it might not work for a top notch designer shoes site and to be honest i found this aspect a bit tedious - but when you get the hang of it ( the hacks and all the settings that is ) it is not too bad - other thing ( and i'm only checking this out at the moment so there might be an easy solution ) is that it doesnt seem to be too worried about the w3c stuff --- ........ and another thing ....if you are using it as an online shop there is no "an post" shipping module available that i am aware of.

btw you can use virtuemart either in product catalog or online shop mode

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