<p>I need to get a list of all documents in a site collection, which I believe I can do with either the alldocs table or the  alluserdata table (MOSS 2007 SP1) but do not see how I can get the author information for the document.  I do not need the contents of the document (e.g. AllDocStreams content)</p>

<p><strong>Something like this:</strong></p>

<pre><code>SELECT     tp_DirName, tp_LeafName, tp_Version, tp_Modified, tp_Created
FROM         AllUserData
WHERE     (tp_ContentType = 'Document') 
AND (tp_LeafName NOT LIKE '%.css') 
AND (tp_LeafName NOT LIKE '%.jpg') 
AND (tp_LeafName NOT LIKE '%.png') 
AND (tp_LeafName NOT LIKE '%.wmf') 
AND (tp_LeafName NOT LIKE '%.gif') 
AND (tp_DirName NOT LIKE '%Template%') 
AND (tp_IsCurrentVersion = 1) 
AND (tp_LeafName NOT LIKE '%.xsl')
ORDER BY tp_SiteId, tp_ListId, tp_DirName, tp_LeafName, tp_IsCurrentVersion DESC
</code></pre>

<p><strong>Is there a better way to go about this?</strong></p>

MOSS provides many
webservices
out of the box which make life a little easier.  They are always worth exploring.
For this particular instance, I think the article,
Getting a list of files from a MOSS document library using a SharePoint web service
, will be of assistance.  If this isn't your exact scenario, it will get you on the right track.
If the Document service doesn't help you, the Search service will I'm sure.  Check the documentation for usage.