If Haystack is available in that Niagara version, you would create a Haystack data source in Mango which would behave as a client and poll the Niagara server. This solution would probably be easier, go ahead and try! All you need is the URL to your Haystack server and your authentication information to create the data source.
If using a scripting data source, you would have the full flexibility of the REST API that was the subject of the post. If it's serving a REST API and that's what you're querying, then you're the client and its the server again.
There are other options. Both the BACnet and Modbus publishers in Mango accept writes over those protocols. If you find it easier to output a CSV once a day, there is a Data File data source that can import something you copy to it or you can define an arbitrary poll class and have Mango copy the file from the remote server. So, either client-server relationship is possible, but both the scripting and Haystack options would definitely be clients to their respective APIs.