Steve, I don't understand. How does this work if you're selling an item that's downloadable? If the node isn't a product node, wouldn't you need to plugin things such as shipping packages, weights, SKU, price, and any attributes or features? That seems to me more like what the original poster was talking about.

In my case I'm writing a custom module that pretty much does that - I'm allowing users with certain role permissions the ability to create a new node, which is not initially a product (just a content node) and then when they submit it, I'm hooking into uc_product_insert to add the node's data to the products table. I, of course, have to load the other values such as SKU, etc., but those are generated dynamically when the node is created.

The reason being I don't want to give the user permission to monkey with our actual product creation system (and expose our Attributes and File Downloads features to people who don't need to see that stuff)... they are just creating a node like they would a book page or a blog, but this one happens to be a node that contains other product information which can be used in reporting and other store-related stuff.

Does this make sense or am I confusing something? (Sorry, it's early )