[TYPO3] need some advice on designing plugin

[Ralph Grier]

Hello List,

I am about to sit down to write a plugin for typo3, and I would be
interested in your thoughts about where to begin.  Basically I have a
database consisting of about 40 tables.  The main table stores actual news
articles and the auxiliary tables store things like languages, country of
relevance, themes, related action items and so on.  My question is, since I
already have a database structure with data in it (approx 20000 articles
plus all the auxiliary entries), does it make more sense to do a plugin from
scratch or to try to fit that database into something like tt_news.   I'd
like people on the backend (editors) to be able to insert a  <whatever I
call the plugin> element on the page and through a flexforms interface
choose for example what country's news should appear and what topic an so
on.

Given that I already have an existing database I have to work with, what
would be your recommendations.  Thank you.