I've suggested something like that to my IT colleagues, but I haven't so much as hinted it at the web developers yet; they'll challenge it unless it can be given to them working and better than what is in place now. And I really need them using the API before I can do anything like that. At the moment, there is a still a lot of SQL done in the website...

I do empathise. I see signs of 'it's a database - that must be the way to do it' :-/

Wade.