Closing the functional and Performance Gap between SQL and NoSQL

Oracle release 12cR1 supports JSON data management that enables users to store, index and query JSON data along with relational data. The integration of the JSON data model into the RDBMS allows a new paradigm of data management where data is storable, indexable and queryable without upfront schema definition. We call this new paradigm Flexible Schema Data Management (FSDM). In this paper, we present enhancements to Oracle's JSON data management in the upcoming 12cR2 release. We present JSON DataGuide, an auto-computed dynamic soft schema for JSON collections that closes the functional gap between the fixed-schema SQL world and the schema-less NoSQL world. We present a self-contained query friendly binary format for encoding JSON (OSON) to close the query performance gap between schema-encoded relational data and schema free JSON textual data. The addition of these new features makes the Oracle RDBMS well suited to both fixedschema SQL and flexible-schema NoSQL use cases, and allows users to freely mix the two paradigms in a single data management system.