[eluser]ntheorist[/eluser]
I had thought about creating a datamap-specific view functionality. The idea i guess would be to set a base path for your model views (ie 'views/datamaps/' or just 'datamaps/' ), and then create a function such as $this->view($viewname, $buffer). The view could be located in views/datamaps/{tablename}/{viewname} or something. The idea is it would automatically supply the view file with its data (or the object itself) and maybe also some meta data (model name, labels etc) in a standard way. This way you can create generic views that contain logic based on an easy to understand folder structure. This probably only saves a few lines of code in the controller, but multiplied several times over many controllers it may be helpful. Plus you have a point to change view loading/structure mechanisms at a later stage.
another loading extension could be something like $this->view_all($view, $buffer), which does the same but iterates over the all array. Maybe for that one you could add a callback function as a third parameter which could provide further validation, trigger auth switches or send special data to each view.
anyway i might try to write up a DMZ extension (atm i simply use a base extend) and if there's interest i can post what i come up with