Re: Thoughts/experiences with JSON/XML on DB2

Forgive me, but... this doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

You're going to convert your multi-format, program-described, file into XML or JSON and store that in a database?

Then, every time you want to access the data, you'll have to parse the XML/JSON data. Every time you want to query it, you'll have to run routines that parse the data, extract the part you want, and see if it matches the query. It can be done from SQL, but it won't perform particularly well, and you can't build indexes over things to search or join on. This would be a maintenance nightmare.

Both XML and JSON are formats mainly used for transferring data between applications, such as when you need to transfer data from a server to a web application or mobile device so that it can be viewed on the display. These formats are not typically used for business data that you'll want to be able to query on, run reports on, etc, etc.

You mention splitting it into 5 tables, and that you abandoned that approach. Can you explain why you abandoned it? this sounds like the most elegant solution to me.


On 3/31/2016 7:18 PM, Justin Taylor wrote:

Has anyone worked with the JSON/XML support in DB2? I'm thinking about using it in a project and am looking for insights.


In a nutshell:
My order history data is in a multi-format S/36 file (not sure the exact terminology). The format makes SQL incredibly difficult, and I'm looking for a way to make ad-hoc queries easier. I tried extracting it into DB2 tables. I ended up with five tables before I started looking for other options. From what I've read, I can extract each order into a JSON or XML document, store it in DB2 table, and then run queries over the DB2 table.

Thanks