JSON data management: supporting schema-less development in RDBMS

Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) have been very successful at managing structured data with well-defined schemas. Despite this, relational systems are generally not the first choice for management of data where schemas are not pre-defined or must be flexible in the face of variations and changes. Instead, No-SQL database systems supporting JSON are often selected to provide persistence to such applications. JSON is a light-weight and flexible semi-structured data format supporting constructs common in most programming languages. In this paper, we analyze the way in which requirements differ between management of relational data and management of JSON data. We present three architectural principles that facilitate a schema-less development style within an RDBMS so that RDBMS users can store, query, and index JSON data without requiring schemas. We show how these three principles can be applied to industry-leading RDBMS platforms, such as the Oracle RDBMS Server, with relatively little effort. Consequently, an RDBMS can unify the management of both relational data and JSON data in one platform and use SQL with an embedded JSON path language as a single declarative language to query both relational data and JSON data. This SQL/JSON approach offers significant benefits to application developers as they can use one product to manage both relational data and semi-structured flexible schema data.

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