I saw recently that Azure SQL Database is getting a few more Database Scoped Options for that platform. These are intended to give more control over the way in which the engine behaves, without requiring each database on a server to function the same way. I expect to get to the on-premises product at some point, where they'll be even more useful as we often might want different behavior for different contexts on an instance. 

While there are advantages to managing all databases in an instance in the same way, I do think that more and more we consolidate databases at times and it's better to have additional control when needed at the database level. This week, I wonder if there are things that you wish you would have been able to specify for each individual database.

What options would you want to see added at the database level? 

I think that many of the options we've been given in current versions, as well as the newer ones appearing in SQL Server 2019 are a good start. I don't know which instance level settings I might want here, but I certainly would like to see newer capabilities at the database level. It would be nice to see the capabilities for jobs and alerts to be set at the database level. Even if this were a part of the Agent subsystem, having the ability to keep these jobs within a database and have the agent read them would be useful.

Moving more capabilities to the database level gives us more flexibility in separating the workloads for different applications. With the movement of the platform code, and many customers, to Azure SQL Database where the system requires less dependence on an instance, it makes sense to start including more options at the database level. I would guess that at some point most of the settings that we need for manage a system will be included and set at the database level.