 <p>For a much more sophisticated discussion of storing JSON in SQL Server as relational data and extracting it back as JSON please see this wonderful article by Phil Factor (thats the name he goes by), Producing JSON Documents from SQL Server queries via TSQL,<a href="https://www.simple-talk.com/sql/t-sql-programming/producing-json-documents-from-sql-server-queries-via-tsql/" rel="nofollow">https://www.simple-talk.com/sql/t-sql-programming/producing-json-documents-from-sql-server-queries-via-tsql/</a> . </p> <p>Be careful about storing JSON as varchar with full text indexes or as xml type (which is not the same as JSON) with xml indexes. There can be severe performance issues when doing inserts on even a million row table so test carefully with realistic, for you, numbers of rows to see if an XML or varchar solution works for you. </p> <p>If all you are going to do is stuff JSON data into varchars and back again then you should have no problems. Until the latest version of Mongo (3.04 or so) Mongo was not transactional based and one client of mine was always losing data and that caused a world of finger pointing. If the version of Mongo that you are using is not ACID compliant be very, very careful.</p> <p>I am amending this answer because SQL Server 2016 now supports JSON in a big way. According to Microsoft it was one of the most requested features. Please see the following two articles:</p> <pre><code>https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn921897.aspx https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jocapc/2015/05/16/json-support-in-sql-server-2016/ </code></pre>