Module development and code questions

I'm making a custom module which connects to a non-drupal database to display a page per country. e.g.:
/countries - shows a listing of countries
/countries/england - shows a page for england
/countries/ireland - shows a page for ireland

Hello, I'm almost finished with node_example.module, I've learned a lot from it and I'm almost ready to start creating my own node types.

If I have understood correctly I use the node table to maintain common fields and create a new table, node_example, which will contain the additional fields of my new node type, this new table should include a nid field to be able to join to the main node table, am I correct?

I have two observations:

1. I modified node_example_validate() to use form_set_error()

Hello, I studying node_example.module in order to create my own node types. I know there is flexinode but I want to learn how this works.

I have a doubt in the Implementation of hook_link(), here is the code:

I want to be able to recover all the nodes attached to a tid. I'm thinking of a function which might be called "taxonomy_get_nodes" for example, but cannot find it anywhere. I have found a "taxonomy_select_nodes", but this only returns a limited amount of information (I really want the nid and the title).

Similarly, a function which would simply return all the properties of a node would be very nice: eg "node_get_attributes"

I have spent ages looking through the documentation but with no success...

I'm writing a module to manage a large amount of encyclopedia data... and I reached the point where I was trying to set the image setup. I couldn't figure it out for the life of me. I set a form_file() in the node_form() hook... but for some reason i'm not fully getting it i think. can someone lead me in the right direction? i think my problem exists in my _insert() and _replace() hooks, but i'm not sure.

I would like to define a block with content depending on the taxonomy of the current node (basically I have defined a taxonomy of travel places used in my blog and want to add a block to the sidebar with a map of that country). I think that I can figure out how to display the block (using a .module file) etc, but I'm having difficulty in finding out what the taxonomy of the current node is. This almost seems an FAQ, but I cannot quite find the answer I'm looking for in the forums.