Drupal Tip: Never query CCK tables directly again | Broad Latitude

I'm currently in the midst of rebuilding Politicker from scratch with Drupal 6. It's a lot of work, but a good chance to get some things right that have always dogged us when maintaining the current (Drupal 5) iteration. One particular vow I've made is to avoid ever querying a CCK field or type storage table directly in the custom modules I'm writing. This is a common practice in most Drupal sites that I've seen and/or developed. It's a convenient shortcut, but it can cause problems. http://ping.fm/rQ1Dt