Relational databases have, for the longest time, evolved into and ruled the realm of database management systems due to their dexterity in allowing users to store data in all formats and all use cases imaginable. However, in the past decade or so, many other models, previously thought of as inefficient and unusable, are again making strides into this realm previously dominated by relational databases. In keeping with their legacy of adapting to the needs of the industry, the popular relational databases have started embracing certain features from the document model. The most ubiquitous of these features is the JSON data type.
Postgres has had JSON support for a while, but it wasn’t that great due to a lack of indexing and key extractor methods. With the release of version 9.2, the Postgres team added native JSON support and operators for transforming data to JSON from other data formats.
MySQL introduced the native JSON support with version 5.7.8 citing automatic JSON validation and Optimized storage support as incentives to store JSON-format strings in JSON columns, instead of a string column.