Re: "SQL Anywhere - another product that nobody can see the point of."
I've been using it for 15 years, and I can see the point of it.
SQLAnywhere fills a niche that no other product seems to address - a mainstream, low maintenance semi-embedded database engine with transparent whole-database encryption, that can be deployed to thousands of remote devices with low support costs.
I haven't found any other product with these features, particularly the easy, transparent whole-database encryption. The main problem is the licence cost, which has caused me to move to SQL Server 2016 Express SP1 LocalDB, which only meets some of the requirements, but is "free".