custom post type as a database

am researching a new project and there is a need to create a custom post type and essentially use this as a database ( a little bit like the “movies” example that is out on the internet – i think by jason tadlock ) …. the fact that there will be 1000’s of posts in this custom post type is worrying me and also i wanted to be about to write custom queries to search through these posts for certain criteria – i want the site to scale well so i am wondering should i do this differently ( maybe just create a table in the databse instead of a custom post type because i dont necessariliy need to access this data using the dashboard as i will be writing a specific control panel for it… any advice greatly appreciated