Okay, nevermind, I just answered my own question. The answer is, "yes, it works the same for data as it does with status".
It helps if I don't have any typos in the configuration files! ;-)
The man page for the hobbitd_rrd program says that it "receives "status" and
"data" messages from hobbitd via stdin, and updates the RRD databases used to generate trend-graphs".
However, further down, it says: "The "ncv" module will automatically detect all occurrences of a "NAME : value" or "NAME = value" string in a *status* message, and generate an RRD file holding all of the name/value data found in the message" (my emphasis added).
I'm trying to get some custom NCV graphs to show up in hobbit, but I only want them to show up in the "trends" column, and not have their own column displayed. Mainly, this is because I will have about 8 different graphs, and there is no need to have separate columns, since they aren't status-generating (green/yellow/red/purple/etc) columns.
According to the "bb" manpage, the "data" keyword should do the job (as opposed to the "status" keyword, which I have successfully used in the past). However, the graphs aren't showing up. When I read the second quote above, it sounds like the "data" keyword doesn't pass data to the NCV module, which would explain why the graphs aren't showing up.
Any ideas/suggestions?