MySQL 5.7 comes with built-in JSON support, comprising two major features:
- A native JSON data type
- A set of built-in functions to manipulate values of the JSON type
Despite being added rather recently (in MySQL 5.7.8 to be precise
- one point release number before the 5.7.9 GA version), I feel
the JSON support so far looks rather useful. Improvements are
certainly possible, but compared to for example XML support
(added in 5.1 and 5.5), the JSON feature set added to 5.7.8 is
reasonably complete, coherent and standards-compliant.
(We can of course also phrase …