Long before 'NoSQL' databases became all the rage, developers stored JSON in relational database tables. With the advent of the JSON data type, developers now have a powerful set of functions to update, retrieve, and filter data based on values stored in a JSON blob. In this session, we discuss storing JSON in our database and how the tools in MySQL can make that task a bit easier. We will start with a discussion of why you might want to store data as JSON as opposed to other storage methods. We will then talk about the different ways in which MySQL can help us achieve that goal and how we might go about deciding what method is best. We will see examples of using the JSON data type to store data in a 'normal' table and use SQL commands to retrieve filter, and sort that data. We will also show how you can validate your JSON schema.