SQL/JSON Standard: Properties and Deficiencies

Abstract

Recently, a new era of application development is emerging, which is based upon the ease of access to modern compute resources, such as mobile devices. This access can be supported using JSON (Java Script Object Notation). Therefore, the support of storage and query access for JSON documents in the context of relational DBMSs is necessary. For this reason, the SQL standardization committee published a proposal called SQL/JSON. In this paper we discuss the JSON features specified in the proposal and show to what extent different relational database systems have integrated them.

At the end of the paper we describe the main drawbacks of the proposal and the ways to solve them. From our point of view, the following should be specified in one of the future proposals of SQL/JSON: JSON documents should be first-class objects in SQL (native storage). Handling JSON documents as first-class objects in SQL would provide the potential for greater capability for users and for better performance. The support of modification of parts of a JSON document using the SQL UPDATE statement is necessary. Direct access of external JSON data should be supported, too.