The difference between static site and full fledged CMS. What if I just want to design something and do some simple DB calls? Don't want something big like word

The difference between static site and full fledged CMS. What if I just want to design something and do some simple DB calls? Don't want something big like wordpress and don't want to dive into some framework and setting up a DB just to access a DB on one or two elements of the page. I want something in the middle that a designer can just hit a couple endpoints and not have to worry about the backend stuff.