Exploring SQL Server 2016 JSON data Part 2

In Part 1 of this series, it was shown how to generate JSON data from the existing table. In this post we can explore how to import JSON datainto a table

SQL Server 2016 supports OPENJSON , a table-value function that parses the JSON data and return the column names and their values as key and value columns

Simple example is

select * FROM OPENJSON( '{ "emp_name": "Madhivanan", "dob": "2000-10-19" } ')

The result is

key value type ------------- ----------------- ---------- emp_name Madhivanan 1 dob 2000-10-19 1

If you want to get the values not in key/value pairs but in normalised structure (column and rows), you can specify the schema using WITH option as shown below

select * FROM OPENJSON( ' { "emp_name": "Madhivanan", "dob": "2000-10-19" } ') with ([emp_name] varchar(100),[dob] date)

The result is

emp_name dob -------------- ----------- Madhivanan 2000-10-19

The above works well for single JSON array. If there are multiple arrays, you need to specify the root element to get all of them.

Let us consider the following example

Create a new table

create table #emp(emp_name varchar(100), dob date)

Now the following code will load the JSON data into this table

DECLARE @json NVARCHAR(MAX) = N' { "Employee": [{ "emp_name": "Madhivanan", "dob": "2000-10-19" }, { "emp_name": "Saran", "dob": "1998-04-22" }, { "emp_name": "Mugil", "dob": "1978-02-14" }] }' create table #emp(emp_name varchar(100), dob date) Insert into #emp(emp_name,dob) select * from OPENJSON(@json,'$.Employee') with ([emp_name] varchar(100),[dob] date) select * from #emp

The result is

emp_name dob ---------------- -------------- Madhivanan 2000-10-19 Saran 1998-04-22 Mugil 1978-02-14

So this way you get JSON data in a structure format and then import them to a table

Other posts on new features of SQL Server 2016

Exploring SQL Server 2016 T-SQL functions STRING_SPLIT

SQL Server 2016 Drop If Exists

Exploring SQL server 2016 T-SQL functions-COMPRESS

Exploring SQL server 2016 T-SQL functions- DECOMPRESS

Exploring SQL Server 2016 JSON data Part 1