Ask HN: How do you deal with a client who gives you seemingly conflicting specs?

Our client has asked us to use Google App Engine with djangae + the Google App Engine datastore (https://djangae.readthedocs.io/en/latest/db_backend/). The data was modeled in a relational fashion before I showed up.

The bulk of my work over the months has been putting out fires as a result of this setup.

The abstraction djangae implements to make data stored in the datastore relational has been too slow for Google App Engine's HTTP timeout.

P.S. I just started this job as the maintenance programmer, and I feel like I've been unjustly placed in the middle of this mess. I immediately suggested switching to a relational database but I was told this was a security risk and the datastore must be used.

Any advice is appreciated.