Writing to a contao 3.5 database from "outside" contao [PHP]?

Hi,

I've a newbie developer question, which I hope some kind soul will be able to help me with.

I'd like to write two or three maintenance-type scripts to handle things related to my Contao 3.5 site. These will be simple things like removal of old member accounts and updating of events and member records with data from a third-party payment processor. I'm envisioning these will be standalone scripts, living in their own directory on the server. I'd like these scripts to be able to access the database, TL_CONFIG variables and some basic Contao API functions such as writing to the log and doing MySQL queries.

What's the best way to achieve this? Could I just include /system/initialize.php and then start using it all, or is there more to it than that? And is it considered very bad form to try and "bypass" Contao in this way?

Perhaps someone has some tips or an example that could get me going in this? I'm a competent PHP programmer, but Contao is new to me.

Thanks in advance :)