[TYPO3-english] Question about extension vs FCE

[Bonneville, Douglas]

On page 391 of the Packt Typo3 book, it says that Flexforms can't really
be used for data processing because they aren't really fields in a
database you can query, just blobs of XML:

"Flexforms are not really suitable for data that needs to be selected on
the basis of it's content." p391, Typo3

If I create a FCE, all my fields are really Flexform data, right?

If I want to consume the content from an FCE on several different pages,
sorted by a category or some other criteria, it seems that is not
possible, because you can't query the FCE content and "SELECT where
[some criteria]". Is that right?

Yes, I'm new to Typo3.

If that is the case, and I need to be able to sort custom content by
it's fields, do I need an extension, period? I need to consume one kind
of master content item by different criteria on many different pages,
and I'm not sure what Typo3 can do or what the best solution is, at this
point. In some other CMSs, this is trivial, but approaching Typo3 is
daunting. It *must* be able to easily do this!!

If FCE's are not searchable / sortable by the data they contain, what
use are they? It seems they would only serve a purpose where manually
sorting the entries in the page view is sufficient. Is that a fair
assessment?

Thanks,
Doug
BonFX.com