@Toby Cryns - Thank you. Several nice clues/pointers!
Plugins like Advanced Custom Fields and MasterPress are making post formats less and less useful, since they are solving the UI problems.
I have looked at ACF, and others that seemed related. I hesitated, though, not understanding/seeing how the data shin-bone was apparently supposed to connect to the Post Formats etc elbow-bone ... so-to-say. As long as we are talking "fields", and "records", and the Tables & Queries & Reports of the database, I'm on solid footing. I'll go Hierarchical, I'll go Relational Algebra, I'll go Heap & Neural Network ... let's just know what our words mean & what we're actually talking about. It's when terms & concepts morph & shape-shift that I start feeling a little woozy. ;-)