sqlite is also part of Python‘s standard library. No need to add dependencies, things just work. If you don’t plan to run heavy analytical workloads in your research, sqlite is probably just fine.

I've tried to use DuckDB with node in Alpine, and I had problems that needed time to work around.

No problems with SQLite.

I ended up putting the code in Debian because of other problmes I found but the decision was already made.

There is an article I think just yesterday showing DuckDb failing for the billion row taxi test, and the author had to go through several boots because of the 0.x novelty of the database