zlacker

SQLAlchemy is an extra abstraction blocking your path here. While you probably should still use an ORM for your regular relation queries, you are not gaining anything significant by trying to use SQLAlchemy for implementing a queue backend. You can write raw SQL with psycopg2 (which is already a dependency in your project thanks to SQLAlchemy), and wrap these raw queue management SQL in a nice little Python module which you can later reuse for other applications as well.

>>sppras+(OP)
You can write raw SQL with SA, while keeping the other nice features it has.

>>mixmas+3q
Without being rude, what are the nice features? I've worked with it a bit and constantly found myself wishing it was just SQL whenever I've bumped into it

>>hmhmhm+QB
API/engine/connection/pooling abstraction, serialization, type checking, etc.

Look up the features of Core if interested. No ORM needed, as it says in the docs.