Django: thin model to consume XML API?
Judging by the deafening silence, I gather the answer is: do it differently.
We're rebuilding the project to consume a JSON ReSTful interface instead.
A software architecture question:
I have the top two/thirds of a Django app: the view and template layers.  I'd like to use an external resource for the model. How?
I'd like to use as much of the Django model layer as possible, for the ORM.  The external resource is a specialized Java package, providing content via a flexible backend XML API.
My current strategy is a sort of thin model shim API: Django models without fields, instead a series of @propertys, each a function pulling data from the external resource, as needed.
Is this a good idea?  How else would you solve this problem?