JSON has become established as a respectable and important data exchange format in the last 6-7 years. You read earlier in this chapter that JSON support in SQL Server was requested six years ago. Since this support was not provided prior to SQL Server 2016, developers had to implement their own solutions. They had to use either CLR or Transact-SQL to process and manipulate JSON data in SQL Server. This section will briefly discuss a few solutions.
JSON in SQL Server prior to SQL Server 2016
JSON4SQL
JSON4SQL is a commercial CLR-based solution (with a trial version). It provides a fast, feature-rich binary JSON type for SQL Server. JSON4SQL stores JSON in a binary format ported from the JSONB format used in the PostgreSQL database...
