Today a collegue of mine asked: whether there was a tool within Sitecore, specially for developers, that operates as a standalone development environment without all the skinning etc...? I hope I've correctly written down your question Remco 
?
Yes there is! 
There's a hidden feature in the Sitecore Client 5.3.1 client and probably previous versions.
It is pretty much undocumented and there's not much to find about on the Sitecore Development Network. The dbbrowser is only shortly mentioned in these two articles:
Log in to the Sitecore Client, and navigate to http://www.yourdomain.com/sitecore/admin/dbbrowser.aspx
And bingo! There it is...
Hope this is usefull
gr,
Robbert