I am trying to export the table of rates setup in magento 1.7.0.2 - essentially what I want to do is export the contents of the table shipping_tablerate via the Mage API (rather than creating my own SQL connection)
Does anyone have any idea?
Ideally I would also like to be able to add records to this table via the Mage API
There is no such function in the API. However, you can create your own function for that: http://www.magentocommerce.com/api/soap/create_your_own_api.html