diff --git a/Dockerfile b/Dockerfile
index d00cbc51fbdc972f6b5616409d5667d6d0bdc849..234abb6a0bbbc0d038a9884ec77e6a23fd1b9f39 100644
--- a/Dockerfile
+++ b/Dockerfile
@@ -1,12 +1,16 @@
-FROM python:3.11
+FROM python:3.11-alpine
 
 ARG ARTIFACT_VERSION
 
+RUN apk add gcc libc-dev libffi-dev
 RUN pip install \
     --pre \
     --extra-index-url https://artifactory.software.geant.org/artifactory/api/pypi/geant-swd-pypi/simple \
+    --target /app \
     geant-service-orchestrator==${ARTIFACT_VERSION}
 
+WORKDIR /app
+
 # Create the directory for the configuration and copy the example config into it
 # NOTE: a real config must be mounted at /etc/gso/config.json when running the container
 RUN mkdir -p /etc/gso
@@ -19,7 +23,12 @@ EXPOSE 8080
 # No need to set environment variables in your docker-compose.
 ENV OSS_PARAMS_FILENAME=/etc/gso/config.json
 # Set the environment variable for the translations directory
-ENV TRANSLATIONS_DIR=$(python3 -c "from os import path; import gso; print(path.join(path.split(gso.__file__)[0], 'translations'))" | tail -n 1)
+ENV TRANSLATIONS_DIR=/app/gso/translations/
+# Run database migrations
+RUN mv gso/migrations gso/migrations_temp
+RUN PYTHONPATH=. python gso/main.py db init
+RUN rm -rf gso/migrations && mv gso/migrations_temp gso/migrations
+RUN PYTHONPATH=. python gso/main.py db upgrade heads
 
 # Start the FastAPI application
-CMD ["uvicorn", "gso.main:app", "--host", "0.0.0.0", "--port", "8080"]
+CMD ["python", "-m", "uvicorn", "gso.main:app", "--host", "0.0.0.0", "--port", "8080"]