Re: Inclusion of json in list of standard data types - Mailing list pgsql-docs

From Erik Wienhold
Subject Re: Inclusion of json in list of standard data types
Date
Msg-id 31bad2c4-1876-4cfe-9463-08f4b02bf536@ewie.name
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Inclusion of json in list of standard data types  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
Responses Re: Inclusion of json in list of standard data types
List pgsql-docs
On 2025-12-06 19:27 +0100, Tom Lane wrote:
> Bob Kline <bkline@rksystems.com> writes:
> > Would there be any reason not to add "json" to the list of data types
> > "specified by SQL" in the "Compatibility" box shown near the beginning
> > of Chapter 8 ("Data Types") of the PostgreSQL documentation?
> 
> Yeah, that seems like an oversight.  Will fix, thanks for noticing it.

But does Postgres' json type really map to the JSON type defined by
SQL:2023?  jsonb appears to be closer to that, although I don't have
access to that particular version of the standard.  Peter wrote [1]
about the compatibility with SQL:2023 and noted that the standard maps
more readily to jsonb (see 3rd bullet point in the notes section) and
features T879–T882 still only apply to jsonb.

I don't think we should list json in that compatibility box unless it's
an alias for jsonb (maybe in some future version).  Or at least note
that jsonb is the better choice for people looking for standard
compatibility.  To me, "compatibility" implies that Postgres also
implements certain features of those standard types rather than just
providing some type that happens to match the name of a standard type
for historical reasons.

[1] https://peter.eisentraut.org/blog/2023/04/18/postgresql-and-sql-2023

-- 
Erik Wienhold



pgsql-docs by date:

Previous
From: Tom Lane
Date:
Subject: Re: Inclusion of json in list of standard data types
Next
From: Erik Wienhold
Date:
Subject: Re: Virtual Generated Columns