Nevermind. It occurred to me yesterday to use a OneToOneField, so there's no ID required:
create view tags_sortedtags as select tag_id, count(*) as cnt from tags_articles_tags group by tag_id; class SortedTag(meta.Model): tag = meta.OneToOneField(Tag) cnt = meta.PositiveSmallIntegerField() and that works perfectly. duh. --B