Puppet users - Sep 2014 - Using exported resources as data containers?

I have a difficult-to-manage application which does not implement a conf.d 
or include syntax in its configuration, but requires a bunch of config 
snippets that contain information only on groups of other servers.   I've 
been dealing with this by generating the config snippets from templates on 
some servers as exported resources, realizing them on the central server, 
and then executing an external script to "compile" these snippets into
the
final config.

This has a couple of drawbacks.  First, it requires puppet to stat nearly 
15,000 little tiny config snippets every run that are not actually used 
directly, and shouldn't need to exist.  Second, the final config file, 
because it's compiled by an external script, isn't under the control of 
puppet, so it has no idea if that file gets modified by something outside.. 
so it can't know to update it. 

I've been mulling over a better way to manage this config file, and I think 
I've hit on an idea, but I have no idea if it will actually work, or what 
the syntax would look like if it could.

I'm thinking of replacing the @@file resources on the remote servers with a 
defined type .. say .. @@data_container.   Then, on the server where the 
data is needed I could use a collector to iterate over the exported 
resources reading data from them to use in the single template for the 
final config file.

Where the data is defined:
@@data_container { 'mydata':
   someparameter => 'foo'
}

And then in the template on the other host, somehow get a collection of 
those resources into an array, and make use of their parameters as 
variables to be referenced in the template.. 

<%- collection.each do |data| -%>
<%= data.someparameter %>
<%- end -%>

Would this work at all?  Is there syntax to support something like this?


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