The JSON Evolution with SQL Database
summary
Claim: Azure SQL Database stores and projects large JSON payloads efficiently. Uses a C# importer (code on GitHub) to load a ~1 GB Kaggle dataset (millions of rows), then extracts fields with OPENJSON / JSON_VALUE / JSON_QUERY and CROSS APPLY to build relational views. Converts views into physical tables with SELECT INTO; applying a clustered columnstore shrinks storage (example heap ≈3 GB vs CCI ≈1 GB for same rows) and speeds aggregations. Indexing supports scalar JSON properties but not arrays. The demo runs end-to-end in minutes.
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chapters (7)
- 0:00Introduction and context
- 7:41Handling large JSON files
- 15:00Database engineering approach
- 21:01JSON functions in SQL
- 35:03NoSQL in relational tables
- 38:45JSON size impact and compression
- 46:27Key takeaways and conclusion
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