Paolo Melchiorre @paulox@fosstodon.org
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I’ve just published the first article of a new series on my blog: “Django ORM standalone” 🧩

The idea is to use Django ORM in standalone mode to connect to existing or legacy databases and work only with the ORM, without the rest of Django, using inspectdb for reverse engineering the schema and querying data with Django QuerySets 🔎

If you’re curious about using Django ORM this way, here’s the link, and let me know what you think 💡
paulox.net/2026/02/20/django-o

© 2026 Paolo Melchiorre CC BY-SA “Snowshoeing on the Voltigno plateau at dusk. A wide snowy plain, fading pink sky and headlamps glowing in the winter night.”

Django ORM Standalone⁽¹⁾: Querying an existing database

A practical step-by-step guide to using Django ORM in standalone mode to connect to and query an existing database using inspectdb.

www.paulox.net · Paolo Melchiorre

Link author: Paolo Melchiorre@paulox@fosstodon.org

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Jeff Triplett @webology@mastodon.social
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RE: fosstodon.org/@paulox/11610288

A++ content. I was in a call with @mkennedyMichael Kennedy and @pythonbynightMario Munoz this week, where this topic came up again.

We looked, and I thought Django's package size was 200M bigger than it actually is. Django is only 10.9 MB compressed, which is within ~1 MB of SQLAlchemy, which is kind of impressive to think about.

So running the Django ORM doesn't quite have the same mental tax as I have assumed all of these years.

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