What are the viable database abstraction layers for Python

Question

I\'m starting to get involved in an open source project Gramps which is exploring switching their backend from BSDDB to a relational database. Either SQLite or MySQL we have

Answer 1

Accessing a proper database from Python is almost always done using a DB-API 2.0-compliant adapter module. While all DB-API modules have identical APIs (or very similar; not all backends support all features), if you are writing the SQL yourself, you will probably be writing SQL in a product-specific dialect, so they are not as interchangeable in practice as they are in theory.

Honestly, SQLite sounds perfect for your use case. I wouldn't bother with "embedded MySQL"; that sounds like the worst of both worlds. Whether you want an ORM like SQLAlchemy is completely up to you; there are good arguments either way. Personally, I dislike ORMs, but then I have a math degree, so the fact that I appreciate SQL as a language probably isn't too surprising :)