Ask HN: Should I switch away from SQLite if I only use JSON fields?

5 points

a year ago

I noticed that in 2024 I completely stopped using database tables with more than one column. Everything just goes into one single JSON column, which I always call "data".

So to query all entries from the table "cars", I do:

    SELECT * FROM cars
    WHERE data ->> '$.color' = 'blue';

That seems a bit redundant, considering all my tables have just the data column. So if the DB knew this, the query could be just

    SELECT * FROM cars
    WHERE color = 'blue';

Should I start looking for a database that works like this? Are there any databases like this out there? It would have to be a database that stores the data in a single file like SQLite. Because I would not want to give up that convenience.

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