"(how) can modx do this?" newbie thread...resource AND custom database cms?

hello there. apologies for the another newb thread, and hope you can get me in the right direction.

i just recently found modx and it seems fascinating, even without me grasping its full potential yet due to limited knowledge.
i am in the process of learning php and have some basic knowledge, and i want to start building some pages with some premade php code offered in modx addons.

a little concept i’m failing to grasp here is...i see you can use modx as a cms for "resources" part on your page that get saved to a database, but what is modx manager like when dealing with creating and editing lets say a large custom database? i would make and want to have the tables easily organisable, searchable and editable within the modx manager. would i need to program something custom or is there on option for this in modx i missed? i cant seem to find where to access custom tables in my database. i would know how to program a basic cms for my custom database usable outside of manager using php only , but i would find it silly then if a 3rd party that wanted to edit resources had to login into manager and then if they wanted to CRUD my custom database they would go trough a web page cms i made...

sorry for this really newb question, been searching for an clear answer for a while now cant find it.

edit: i also noticed pre made modx searches only search resources and not all databases for that project...what is the solution to this?

Which version are you working with? Evo has eForm, and Revo has Formit which can be used for front-end data management. There’s also always the AJAX option for dealing with custom data.

i downloaded revo and decided to get used to the latest version right off the bat. so only front end data management would be possible here? i was wondering if it could be all handled in the modx manager.

i have a long term goal to build a site that will have thousands or even tens of thousands of entries in its database(and with that project to teach myself modx and more php),entries would have product name, price info, picture etc etc for each. and i would like a simple cms with a couple of fields so anyone without any knowledge can log in and put in a new entry with this info. so what im wondering is...what would be the best approach to tackle this assignment and what would be the skills needed?

susan, could you tell me a bit about the ajax option, maybe where to start? thank you very much for your reply.

For the Revo backend, this is what you want http://rtfm.modx.com/display/revolution20/Custom+Manager+Pages

thank you very much you saved me alot of time looking around since i wasnt even sure if modx is the right tool for the job...well..i know its really flexible but would it make me learn two additional programing languages before i can pull it off. thanx alot again!

if you want to use TV-input types for your table-fields in your CMP you can also try thisone:

http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,56636.0.html

thanx alot mr. bruno! ill explore that one. dont care how its done as long and i get the desired result and learn from it.