Use SQL for XML and JSON Creation

Lukas Eder argues that if you’re storing the data in SQL and you need to get data from a database into JSON or XML format, just use SQL for that:

In English: We need a list of actors, and the film categories they played in, and grouped in each category, the individual films they played in.

Let me show you how easy this is with SQL Server SQL (all other database dialects can do it these days, I just happen to have a SQL Server example ready:

Lukas makes a great point and has a FAQ to follow up on it. If there’s a reason for mapping at a higher layer—if you’re actually adding value rather than building out a set of converters—that’s one thing, but if you’re just accepting a data set and returning a JSON blob…well, your database product can do that too.