To date, Kong's configuration has lived in a DB, but with DB-less you can hold the entire configuration in a single YAML or JSON file. You'd want to use DB-less

To date, Kong's configuration has lived in a DB, but with DB-less you can hold the entire configuration in a single YAML or JSON file. You'd want to use DB-less in instances where you want to use declarative config, or in instances where you want to minimize the number of moving parts. As long as your config can fit in-memory, it's a great way to keep things simple.