While SQL Server has supported JSON for years, only version 2025 brought us the dedicated JSON data type. So, first let's recap our possibilities of managing JSON data in SQL Server. But then, what's the practical use?

Well, also a new feature in 2025 is a function to call external REST APIs from your T-SQL code, even in on-premises environments. And many of those APIs respond using JSON data. In this session you'll learn how to set things up, how to invoke those APIs in different scenarios and how to handle their responses.

I'll also introduce the Postman tool that helps us along the way of testing our API calls, and we'll have lots of mostly free-to-use API examples from different categories to get you started immediately.