In 2017, Microsoft announced SQL Server in the Windows Containers Beta program, allowing developers to connect to SQL Server instances from within or outside the same container. Benefits included facilitating setup, maximizing instance densities for development and testing, and isolating and managing applications in a shared environment.
Today, Microsoft announced that it is suspending the program.
In a short suspension In its blog, Microsoft states that the SQL Server program in Windows Containers Beta has been suspended due to ecosystem challenges and "usage patterns". The latter suggests that the program simply did not have enough users to justify ongoing support. The company carefully formulated its statement to show that there are no plans to repeat the project in the near future.
The Redmond-based company suggests that users migrate to SQL Server on Linux Containers, which is already supported in production environments as opposed to Windows. It is important to note that SQL Server in Windows Containers never managed to "chase" the "beta" tag, so it was not intended for production environments. So this announcement will definitely annoy developers who have invested time in developing applications that use this feature or those who have used it in production environments.
Microsoft has announced that SQL Server Express and Developer for Windows Containers Docker repositories will be deleted shortly. The tags in these repositories will also be deleted and Docker images will no longer be available for download.
