 <p><strong>EDIT</strong></p> <p>You can continue using the same models and hence keep the references throughout the app. Just that, because of your new database schema you'll have to set the table name for the particular model.Also you can use the alias_attribute method, to so you can continue referring to the old attribute names even if you have changed the column names in your table.For ex:</p> <pre><code>class Book &lt; ActiveRecord::Base set_table_name 'publications' set_primary_key 'id' alias_attribute :id,:publication_id end </code></pre>