Sharing a database between Twisted and Django
I would just avoid the Django ORM, it's not all that and it would be a pain to access outside of a Django context (witness the work that was required to make Django support multiple databases). Twisted database access always requires threads (even with twisted.adbapi), and threads give you access to any ORM you choose. SQLalchemy would be a good choice.
I am developing a multiplayer gaming server that uses Django for the webserver (HTML frontend, user authentication, games available, leaderboard, etc.) and Twisted to handle connections between the players and the games and to interface with the games themselves.  The gameserver, the webserver, and the database may run on different machines.
What is the "best" way to architect the shared database, in a manner that supports changes to the database schema going forward.  Should I try incorporating Django's ORM in the Twisted framework and used deferreds to make it non-blocking?  Should I be stuck creating and maintaining two separate databases schemas / interfaces, one in Django's model and the other using twisted.enterprise.row?
Similarly, with user authentication, should I utilize twisted's user authentication functionality, or try to include Django modules into the gameserver to handle user authentication on the game side?