I can think of a few, but they probably don't fit into the licensing issues that this article is about:
- I want to make it easier for other devs to get a development environment up and running quickly, but want to avoid having to go through the full SQL Server installation process, or want the ability to switch versions quickly.
- I want an easy way to spin up a database for running automated end to end tests as part of CI/CD pipelines, and I want to be able to just bin it easily once I'm done.
In both those examples I maybe don't care if the performance of the SQL server instance isn't as good as a bare metal install, and I potentially don't care if any of the data is persisted or not. What I care about is that I can get something up and running quickly.
Not saying you don't have valid points, I'm just saying that production isn't the only use-case for running database servers, and there are situations where you want something transient that you can start and stop rapidly.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
