Convert JSONL to Microsoft SQL Server
Upload a .json or .ndjson file and get back a Microsoft SQL Server SQL script you can load straight into your database. Types are preserved rather than flattened to text. Free, no registration, up to 10MB.
Click to upload or drag and drop
CSV, Excel, SQLite, SQL, DBF (max 10 MB)
How your data is typed in Microsoft SQL Server
Generated from the converter's own Microsoft SQL Server type mapping — this is what it actually emits, not an example.
| Your data | Microsoft SQL Server type |
|---|---|
| Whole number | BIGINT |
| Decimal (money) | DECIMAL(10,2) |
| Floating point | FLOAT |
| True / false | BIT |
| Date | DATE |
| Date and time | DATETIME2 |
| Short text | NVARCHAR(255) |
| Long text | NVARCHAR(MAX) |
| Binary data | VARBINARY(MAX) |
Working from a .jsonl file
JSON Lines and NDJSON are the same format under two names, and .jsonl is the spelling used by jq pipelines, Spark and machine-learning tooling. The content converts identically; only the file name causes trouble.
- →The .jsonl extension is not one the uploader recognises. Rename the file to .ndjson or .json - nothing inside it has to change.
- →Tools that write JSON Lines usually emit a directory of shards, part-00000.jsonl and so on. Only one convertible file per upload is accepted, and with no enclosing array to merge, cat part-*.jsonl > all.ndjson is the whole job.
- →Relaxed JSON is not JSON: trailing commas, single quotes and unquoted keys fail to parse, which is what a file written in a JSON5-ish mode will do. Running it through jq normalises it.
Which SQL Server this runs on
Microsoft SQL Server is the full product name, and it covers a wide range of places to put a database: Express on a laptop, a Developer instance, a Linux container, a managed Azure SQL database. The script was written not to care which of them it lands in.
- →There is no CREATE DATABASE, no USE, and no filegroup or collation clause anywhere in the file, so nothing in it can be refused by an edition that forbids those. Which database it populates is decided by your client's connection.
- →No schema is named either, so the tables land in the default schema of whichever login runs the script - dbo for most logins. Moving them elsewhere afterwards is an ALTER SCHEMA ... TRANSFER.
- →The primary key is emitted as an unnamed constraint, which the server materialises as a clustered index under a name it invents. Nothing else is indexed, so any index the source carried has to be rebuilt by hand.
Reading JSONL
- →JSON types are trusted: 1 and "1" stay different things.
- →Numbers with a decimal point are read as exact decimals rather than floats.
- →Both an array of objects and newline-delimited JSON work, and a wrapped array like {"data": [...]} is unwrapped automatically.
- →Nested objects are kept as JSON rather than flattened into invented column names.
Writing Microsoft SQL Server
- →String literals carry the N prefix, so non-ASCII text survives whatever collation the database uses.
- →Timestamps become DATETIME2. T-SQL’s TIMESTAMP is a row-version counter, not a point in time.
- →Identity columns are wrapped in SET IDENTITY_INSERT so explicit key values load.
- →Statements are separated with GO in batches.
What you get
A ZIP containing dump.sql, plus a README with the exact command to load it. If anything about your data needed a judgement call, a _warnings.txt explains it.
Load this dump into SQL Server:
sqlcmd -S HOST -U USER -P PASSWORD -d DATABASE -i dump.sql
Notes:
- Text columns are NVARCHAR and literals carry the N prefix, so
non-ASCII data survives regardless of database collation.
- Timestamps are DATETIME2. T-SQL's TIMESTAMP type is a row
version, not a point in time.Questions
- Is converting JSONL to Microsoft SQL Server free?
- Yes. Files up to 10MB convert free with no account. There is a limit of five conversions per day per IP address.
- Will my JSONL data keep its types in Microsoft SQL Server?
- Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real Microsoft SQL Server types rather than everything becoming text. The mapping table above shows exactly what you get.
- Do you store my file?
- No. The file is written to a temporary directory, converted, and the directory is deleted as soon as your download has been sent.