It is possible to build, create, start and up a specific service or services from Docker Compose. By default these commands work with an optional list of services. Each service specified will have the command run for it.

This is handy should only some of the services want to be started and can come in handy for testing or just bringing up the DB without all other services.

As an alternative, Compose has the ability to use profiles which can make it easier to manage selective service actions in larger docker-compose.yml files.