Modeling semi-structured data in Rails
But sometimes, we can stumble accross data that don't fit in the relational model. We call this kind of data: semi-structured data. When this happens, the things that makes relational databases powerful are the things that gets in our way, and complicate our model instead of simplifying it.
That's why document databases exist, to model and store semi structured data. However, if we choose to use a document database, we'll loose all the power of using a relational database.
Luckily for us, relational databases like Postgres and MySQL now has good JSON support. So most of us won't need to use a document database like MongoDB, as it would be overkill. Most of the time, we only need to denormalize some parts of our model. So it makes more sense to use simple JSON columns for those, instead of going all-in, and dump your beloved relational database for MongoDB.
Currently in Rails, we can have full control over how our JSON data is stored and retrieved from the database, by using the Attributes API to serialize and deserialize our data. So let's see how we can model semi-structured data in a more convinient way.
