Integration of legacy mySQL database into a new Django ORM powered data structure <p>We have a Django project on which we were working for the several past months, and it is basically the new, improved version of an old system that was powered by PHP and mySQL.</p> <p>Now I need to convert all of the old data from the mySQL tables, into the new Django - ORM based data structure. </p> <p>I've already created a new Django project name 'integration', and ran </p> <pre><code>pytohn django-admin.py inspectdb &gt; models.py </code></pre> <p>The result wasn't all that good, because we were using MyISAM DB engine, and there are no clear relations between the models.</p> <p>Also, the models are much different in their design, although the bottom line is the same(same data represented otherwise).</p> <p>The questions are:</p> <ol> <li><p>First of all, can this task theoretically be handled this way, purely by south migrations from here onward.</p></li> <li><p>How can I lose the nasty id(PK=true) column, and the database_name attribute in the Meta class from the output of inspect db without breaking it all.</p></li> <li><p>When preforming major changes to the models(several fields at a time, name, length and type altogether for each one), is there anyway to tell south explicitly which field is which, so the data in the existing columns will be migrated correctly?.</p></li> </ol> <p>Clearly this is my first integration project of this kind of scale, so sorry for all of the ignorant questions.</p> <p>What approach will you recommend?, any tools to help me out?.</p> <p>Is it better to go by Induction(from the bigger, more central object, to the smaller ones) or by deduction(the other way around)?.</p>