Drupal (or some other CMS) or a simple MVC-based PHP framework like CakePHP?

We have a dashboard that we'd like to build for our customers. This dashboard displays various statistics about one or more of their (business) Facebook Pages. The statistics are pulled from Facebook using their FQL and Graph APIs, stored locally in a MySQL database, and queried/derived/presented to the user based on dates requested and some other variables. Additionally, users will be able to take action on various items (e.g., reply to wall posts, etc.) using their JavaScript SDK.

One of the external developers we spoke with -- currently don't have any resources within the company with time to work on this -- has proposed building the system around Drupal. Now I'm a fan of CMS systems for web pages, blogs, etc. but using something like Drupal did not come to mind here as much of the functionality seems irrelevant.

Can someone please let me know the advantages and disadvantages of using Drupal for custom development work like this? While we're looking for an elegantly designed system that our developers (as we hire them) can maintain and ex开发者_JAVA技巧tend over time, I'm not so sure a CMS is the way to go.

Thanks!

I wouldn't recommend Drupal at all for something like this. You don't really need a full-blown CMS like Drupal, and it would be pushing it to say you should use a framework such as CakePHP.

Personally, I would build this as a standalone app. I see no reason to get a framework involved unless you plan on expanding the APP considerably in the future.

Drupal is often called a content management framework because it's so extensible, and certainly you could implement the dashboard in Drupal. However, I would question the developer thoroughly about their rationale for using Drupal before consenting to it.

Everything you specified sounds like custom development and has nothing to do with content management. You're manipulating data from Facebook, not a database of content produced by an editor. Your data is custom data, not simple Drupal node data (title, body, etc). I would go with a general Web application framework such as CakePHP. That way you get templates and user authentication without all the CMS overhead.

While I don't think that Drupal is really necessary in this case, I think that the final decision lies with what the strengths of the contractors you are using are.

If Drupal will allow them to finish it more quickly, and more securely (due to the fact that Drupal will provide well test user authentication, used by many), then I would say let them go with Drupal.

That said, I do agree that Drupal sounds to be more than what is necessary, and there would probably be far less cruft if you used a simple framework.