Problems Using Django 1.11 with Sql-Server database view - django

Question

I am trying to use Django (django 1.11.4) to read data from a SQL-Server view (sql server 2012 - I use sql_server.pyodbc [aka django-pyodbc] for this), and nothing seems to work.
Here's my model:
class NumUsersAddedPerWeek(models.Model):
id = models.BigIntegerField(primary_key=True)
year = models.IntegerField('Year')
week = models.IntegerField('Week')
num_added = models.IntegerField('Number of Users Added')
if not settings.RUNNING_UNITTESTS:
class Meta:
managed = False
db_table = 'num_users_added_per_week'
and here's how the database view is created:
create view num_users_added_per_week
as
select row_number() over(order by datepart(year, created_at), datepart(week, created_at)) as 'id',
datepart(year, created_at) as 'year', datepart(week, created_at) as 'week', count(*) as 'num_added'
from [<database name>].[dbo].[<table name>]
where status = 'active' and created_at is not null
group by datepart(year, created_at), datepart(week, created_at)
The view works just fine by itself (e.g., running 'select * from num_users_added_per_week' runs just fine (and very quickly)...
I used the following django command (i.e., 'action') to try 3 different ways of attempting to pull data via the model, and none of them worked (although, judging from other posts, these approaches seemed to work with previous versions of django) :(:
from django.core.management.base import BaseCommand, CommandError
from <project name>.models import NumUsersAddedPerWeek
from django.db import connection
class Command(BaseCommand):
def handle(self, *args, **options):
# attempt # 1 ...
num_users_info = NumUsersAddedPerWeek.objects.all()
info = num_users_info.first()
for info in num_users_info:
print(info)
# attempt # 2 ...
cursor = connection.cursor()
cursor.execute('select * from num_users_added_per_week')
result = cursor.fetchall()
# attempt # 3 ...
num_users_info = NumUsersAddedPerWeek.objects.raw('select * from num_users_added_per_week')
for info in num_users_info:
print(info)
Each of the 3 different approaches gives me the same error: "('42S02', "[42S02] [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Invalid object name 'num_users_added_per_week'. (208) (SQLExecDirectW)")"
Please note: my migrations are running just fine - adding class Meta: managed = False is crucial with latest versions of Django in situations where you do not want migrations to create / update / delete your sql table structure...

Answer 1

I figured it out - I have a custom Database Router (in settings.DATABASE_ROUTERS) that I had not properly added this to (I am doing this because the project has multiple databases - see Multi-DB to see why and how to do this). (So boneheaded bug on my part)
But here's what I found out: It turns out all three of the methods I used should work, if you have 1 database in your project. If you have multiple databases then you can query the database through your model object (e.g., <Model Name>.objects.all()) or through raw sql, but you have to specify the raw sql via your model (e.g., <Model Name>.objects.raw(<select * from <view name>)) - otherwise your Database Router will not know which database to use.