We live in the age of Web APIs and microservices. JSON appears to be the data format of choice of the applications we, as DBAs, need to support. It would be easy to say, that perhaps SQL Server is not the right choice there, but then, sometimes we don’t have a choice so…

Let me tell you about my experience of working with JSON data in SQL Server, about the problems, the possibilities and the surprises discovered along the way. Let’s talk about what’s practical, what’s not when dealing with semi-structured data in a relational database. Let me show you the techniques I have learnt on the way and their performance implications.