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JSON
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight, text-based data interchange format that's easy for humans to read and write, and simple for machines to…
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight, text-based data interchange format that's easy for humans to read and write, and simple for machines to parse and generate. It consists of two primary structures: objects (enclosed in curly braces) containing key-value pairs, and arrays (enclosed in square brackets) of values. JSON supports basic data types like strings, numbers, booleans, and null, making it versatile for representing structured data. While originally derived from JavaScript, JSON is language-independent and widely used for data exchange in web applications, APIs, and configuration files. In the context of data engineering, JSON is often used for storing semi-structured data in databases or as an intermediate format in data pipelines.
DuckDB provides built-in support for working with JSON data. Here's an example of querying JSON data in DuckDB:
Related terms
JavaScript programming language →
JavaScript is a versatile, high-level programming language primarily used for web development.
CSV →CSV (Comma-Separated Values) is a simple, text-based file format used to store tabular data.
Table format →A table format is a metadata layer on top of data files in a lake or object storage that defines what constitutes a table — its schema, partitioning, and file list — enabling ACID transactions, schema evolution, and time travel across multiple query engines.
Reading files in DuckDB →DuckDB can read CSV, Parquet, JSON, and other file formats directly with SQL table functions, whether the files are local, remote over HTTP/S3, or matched in bulk with a glob pattern.
Data lake →A data lake is a centralized repository that stores raw structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data at any scale, in its native format, until it's needed for analysis.
Protobuf →Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) is Google's language-neutral, binary serialization format that defines message structures in .proto schema files, compiled into strongly typed code for many programming languages, widely used in gRPC APIs and event streaming.