Does Python Django support custom SQL and denormalized databases with no Foreign Key relationships?
You can just create the model.py and avoid having SQL Alchemy automatically create the tables leaving it up to you to define the actual tables as you please.  So although there are foreign key relationships in the model.py this does not mean that they must exist in the actual tables.  This is a very good thing considering how ludicrously foreign key constraints are implemented in MySQL - MyISAM just ignores them and InnoDB creates a non-optional index on every single one regardless of whether it makes sense.
I've just started learning Python Django and have a lot of experience building high traffic websites using PHP and MySQL. What worries me so far is Python's overly optimistic approach that you will never need to write custom SQL and that it automatically creates all these Foreign Key relationships in your database. The one thing I've learned in the last few years of building Chess.com is that its impossible to NOT write custom SQL when you're dealing with something like MySQL that frequently needs to be told what indexes it should use (or avoid), and that Foreign Keys are a death sentence. Percona's strongest recommendation was for us to remove all FKs for optimal performance.
Is there a way in Django to do this in the models file? create relationships without creating actual DB FKs? Or is there a way to start at the database level, design/create my database, and then have Django reverse engineer the models file?