In 2017, Microsoft announced SQL Server in the Windows Containers Beta program, allowing developers to connect to SQL Server instances from within the same container or outside of it. Sta benefits were to ease setup, maximize instance density for development and testing purposes, and isolate and manage applications in a shared environment.
Today, Microsoft announced that it is suspending the program.
In a short suspension on its blog, Microsoft says that the SQL Server in Windows Containers Beta program has been put into suspension λόγω των προκλήσεων του οικοσυστήματος και των “προτύπων χρήσης”. Το τελευταίο υποδηλώνει ότι το πρόγραμμα απλά δεν είχε αρκετούς χρήστες για να δικαιολογήσει μια συνεχή υποστήριξη. Η company she carefully formulated her 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.