What Is JSON Query Language (JAQL)?
You've got a problem if you're looking for a single standard query language that can handle all your JSON needs. If you've ever used a database before, you might be familiar with the concept of a query language. It's what lets you ask a database question like "I want to know who has the most money" or "I want to show me all the pets in this area". There are many different databases, and each kind has its query language. SQL is the most common one—it's used by almost every relational database, from MySQL to PostgreSQL. But some non-relational databases use different languages, like MongoDB's map/reduce or Cassandra's SQL-like query language called CQL. JSON is not an outright database—it's just a format for creating documents similar to XML and because it's just one format for creating documents like XML and not a database itself, there isn't any standard query language for JSON documents yet. Instead, there are many independent languages developed by different organizations for manipulating and parsing JSON documents. JSON was born out of necessity. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the web was changing. The world had gone from Mosaic to Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer, but browsers were getting faster between those two things. People were beginning to use their computers for activities other than simply surfing the internet; as a result, they desired for their apps to be able to communicate with one another without the need to run Java applets or Flash plug-ins. This is where JSON comes in: it's a way for you to send data back and forth from one computer program or another without having to worry about what kind of programming language either program uses. Just send JSON over whatever protocol you use, and it'll work!
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