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0 pointstoomanybeersies7y ago0 comments

I'm currently working on a product that uses JSONb columns extensively.

To be honest, I don't like it. I'm not sure if it's bad design, or if it's just bad to mix relational databases with JSON, but I'm constantly battling to do things that I would find trivial in SQL.

I guess it really depends on your requirements though. I've found that JSONb is great for storing historical data and results, write-once sort of stuff. I've found it's not so good for storing objects that get modified, especially if a relation can change.

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timewarrior7y ago

If I want to use it as a write only table where I would like to get virtual indexes for values inside the JSONb column.

Would you recommend using Postgres for this usecase?

guiriduro7y ago

This discussion might be useful re: indexing JSONb columns and a comparison of performance (a bit out of date, things have probably improved even further);

http://bitnine.net/blog-postgresql/postgresql-internals-json...

The GIN index is an inverted index, if you're expecting to query against several keys; alternatively if you have a large keyspace and no need to query outside a small number of properties, you could create individual hash or btree indexes for each one.

Postgres is good for this usecase, but as always, YMMV, consider alternatives/optimizations if your scale or write-volume dictate otherwise (e.g. sharding, Citusdb etc.)

codedokode7y ago

Also you cannot store foreign keys in JSON.

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