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Loading data from a (MySQL) database into Django without models

This might sound like a bit of an odd question - but is it possible to load data from a (in this case MySQL) table to be used in Django without the need for a model to be present?
I realise this isn't really the Django way, but given my current scenario, I don't really know how better to solve the problem.
I'm working on a site, which for one aspect makes use of a table of data which has been bought from a third party. The columns of interest are liklely to remain stable, however the structure of the table could change with subsequent updates to the data set. The table is also massive (in terms of columns) - so I'm not keen on typing out each field in the model one-by-one. I'd also like to leave the table intact - so coming up with a model which represents the set of columns I am interested in is not really an ideal solution.
Ideally, I want to have this table in a database somewhere (possibly separate to the main site database) and access its contents directly using SQL.

You can always execute raw SQL directly against the database: see the docs.

There is one feature called inspectdb in Django. for legacy databases like MySQL , it creates models automatically by inspecting your db tables. it stored in our app files as models.py. so we don't need to type all column manually.But read the documentation carefully before creating the models because it may affect the DB data ...i hope this will be useful for you.

I guess you can use any SQL library available for Python. For example : http://www.sqlalchemy.org/
You have just then to connect to your database, perform your request and use the datas at your will. I think you can't use Django without their model system, but nothing prevents you from using another library for this in parallel.

Dynamic Scalable Mysql Table

Here is my situation. I used Python, Django and MySQL for a web development.
I have several tables for form posting, whose fields may change dynamically. Here is an example.
Like a table called Article, it has three fields now, called id INT, title VARCHAR(50), author VARCHAR(20), and it should be able store some other values dynamically in the future, like source VARCHAR(100) or something else.
How can I implement this gracefully? Is MySQL be able to handle it? Anyway, I don't want to give up MySQL totally, for that I'm not really familiar with NoSQL databases, and it may be risky to change technique plan in the process of development.
Any ideas welcome. Thanks in advance!

You might be interested in this post about FriendFeed's schemaless SQL approach.
Loosely:
Store documents in JSON, extracting the ID as a column but no other columns
Create new tables for any indexes you require
Populate the indexes via code
There are several drawbacks to this approach, such as indexes not necessarily reflecting the actual data. You'll also need to hack up django's ORM pretty heavily. Depending on your requirements you might be able to keep some of your fields as pure DB columns and store others as JSON?

I've never actually used it, but django-not-eav looks like the tool for the job.
"This app attempts the impossible: implement a bad idea the right way." I already love it :)
That said, this question sounds like a "rethink your approach" situation, for sure. But yes, sometimes that is simply not an option...

Python: Dumping Database Data with Peewee

Background
I am looking for a way to dump the results of MySQL queries made with Python & Peewee to an excel file, including database column headers. I'd like the exported content to be laid out in a near-identical order to the columns in the database. Furthermore, I'd like a way for this to work across multiple similar databases that may have slightly differing fields. To clarify, one database may have a user table containing "User, PasswordHash, DOB, [...]", while another has "User, PasswordHash, Name, DOB, [...]".
The Problem
My primary problem is getting the column headers out in an ordered fashion. All attempts thus far have resulted in unordered results, and all of which are less then elegant.
Second, my methodology thus far has resulted in code which I'd (personally) hate to maintain, which I know is a bad sign.
Work so far
At present, I have used Peewee's pwiz.py script to generate the models for each of the preexisting database tables in the target databases, then went and entered all primary and foreign keys. The relations are setup, and some brief tests showed they're associating properly.
Code: I've managed to get the column headers out using something similar to:
for i, column in enumerate(User._meta.get_field_names()):
ws.cell(row=0,column=i).value = column
As mentioned, this is unordered. Also, doing it this way forces me to do something along the lines of
getattr(some_object, title)
to dynamically populate the fields accordingly.
Thoughts and Possible Solutions
Manually write out the order that I want stuff in an array, and use that for looping through and populating data. The pros of this is very strict/granular control. The cons are that I'd need to specify this for every database.
Create (whether manually or via a method) a hash of fields with an associated weighted value for all possibly encountered fields, then write a method for sorting "_meta.get_field_names()" according to weight. The cons of this is that the columns may not be 100% in the right order, such as Name coming before DOB in one DB, while after it in another.
Feel free to tell me I'm doing it all wrong or suggest completely different ways of doing this, I'm all ears. I'm very much new to Python and Peewee (ORMs in general, actually). I could switch back to Perl and do the database querying via DBI with little to no hassle. However, it's libraries for excel would cause me as many problems, and I'd like to take this as a time to expand my knowledge.

There is a method on the model meta you can use:
for field in User._meta.get_sorted_fields():
print field.name
This will print the field names in the order they are declared on the model.

Is this a good approach to avoid using SQLAlchemy/SQLObject?

Rather than use an ORM, I am considering the following approach in Python and MySQL with no ORM (SQLObject/SQLAlchemy). I would like to get some feedback on whether this seems likely to have any negative long-term consequences since in the short-term view it seems fine from what I can tell.
Rather than translate a row from the database into an object:
each table is represented by a class
a row is retrieved as a dict
an object representing a cursor provides access to a table like so:
cursor.mytable.get_by_ids(low, high)
removing means setting the time_of_removal to the current time
So essentially this does away with the need for an ORM since each table has a class to represent it and within that class, a separate dict represents each row.
Type mapping is trivial because each dict (row) being a first class object in python/blub allows you to know the class of the object and, besides, the low-level database library in Python handles the conversion of types at the field level into their appropriate application-level types.
If you see any potential problems with going down this road, please let me know. Thanks.

That doesn't do away with the need for an ORM. That is an ORM. In which case, why reinvent the wheel?
Is there a compelling reason you're trying to avoid using an established ORM?

You will still be using SQLAlchemy. ResultProxy is actually a dictionary once you go for .fetchmany() or similar.
Use SQLAlchemy as a tool that makes managing connections easier, as well as executing statements. Documentation is pretty much separated in sections, so you will be reading just the part that you need.

web.py has in a decent db abstraction too (not an ORM).
Queries are written in SQL (not specific to any rdbms), but your code remains compatible with any of the supported dbs (sqlite, mysql, postresql, and others).
from http://webpy.org/cookbook/select:
myvar = dict(name="Bob")
results = db.select('mytable', myvar, where="name = $name")

Database change underneath SQLObject

I'm starting a web project that likely should be fine with SQLite. I have SQLObject on top of it, but thinking long term here -- if this project should require a more robust (e.g. able to handle high traffic), I will need to have a transition plan ready. My questions:
How easy is it to transition from one DB (SQLite) to another (MySQL or Firebird or PostGre) under SQLObject?
Does SQLObject provide any tools to make such a transition easier? Is it simply take the objects I've defined and call createTable?
What about having multiple SQLite databases instead? E.g. one per visitor group? Does SQLObject provide a mechanism for handling this scenario and if so, what is the mechanism to use?
Thanks,
Sean

3) Is quite an interesting question. In general, SQLite is pretty useless for web-based stuff. It scales fairly well for size, but scales terribly for concurrency, and so if you are planning to hit it with a few requests at the same time, you will be in trouble.
Now your idea in part 3) of the question is to use multiple SQLite databases (eg one per user group, or even one per user). Unfortunately, SQLite will give you no help in this department. But it is possible. The one project I know that has done this before is Divmod's Axiom. So I would certainly check that out.
Of course, it would probably be much easier to just use a good concurrent DB like the ones you mention (Firebird, PG, etc).
For completeness:
1 and 2) It should be straightforward without you actually writing much code. I find SQLObject a bit restrictive in this department, and would strongly recommend SQLAlchemy instead. This is far more flexible, and if I was starting a new project today, I would certainly use it over SQLObject. It won't be moving "Objects" anywhere. There is no magic involved here, it will be transferring rows in tables in a database. Which as mentioned you could do by hand, but this might save you some time.

Your success with createTable() will depend on your existing underlying table schema / data types. In other words, how well SQLite maps to the database you choose and how SQLObject decides to use your data types.
The safest option may be to create the new database by hand. Then you'll have to deal with data migration, which may be as easy as instantiating two SQLObject database connections over the same table definitions.
Why not just start with the more full-featured database?

I'm not sure I understand the question.
The SQLObject documentation lists six kinds of connections available. Further, the database connection (or scheme) is specified in a connection string. Changing database connections from SQLite to MySQL is trivial. Just change the connection string.
The documentation lists the different kinds of schemes that are supported.