CakePHP Questions

I'm creating a simple interactive courseware for MySQL using CakePHP w/ jQuery.

The APP doesn't need it's own database, but rathar use what's provided on config/database.php. Providing a root user, all databases/tables can be used. Specifying users other than root shows their privileged databases/tables accordingly.

By creating the models Database** and **Tables**, I've managed to show all tables and databases by overriding the **find() operation of each model. But this is accomplished by hard-coding arrays in the model that can be used by the controller as well as the views, following cake conventions.

For the databases, I execute a $this->query("SHOW DATABASES") and construct the data array like so:

function find($type, $options = array(), $order = null, $recursive = null) {
$items = $this->query('SHOW DATABASES');
$databases = Set::extract('/SCHEMATA/Database', $items);
$counter_db = 1;
foreach($databases as $database) {
	$current = array (
			'Database'=>array (
					'id' => $counter_db++,
					'name' => $database
			),
	);
	$this->query('USE '.$database);

	// Show tables in the selected db
	$_tables = $this->query('SHOW TABLES');
	$tables = Set::extract('/TABLE_NAMES/Tables_in_'.$database, $_tables);
	$counter_table = 1;
	foreach($tables as $table) {
		$current['Table'][] = array(
				'id' => $counter_table++,
				'name' => $table,
				'database_id' => $counter_db
		);
	} // end foreach
	$this->databases[] = $current;
} // end foreach
switch ($type) {
	case 'all':
		return $this->databases;
		break;
	case 'count';
		return count($this->databases);
		break;
	case 'list':
		return Set::combine($this->databases, '{n}.'.$this->alias.'.id', array(
				'%s'
				, '{n}.'.$this->alias.'.'.'name'
			)
		);
		break;
         default:
                return parent::find($type, $options, $order, $recursive);
                break;
} // end switch
}

Is this process on the right track or something better could be done?