Re:RX – a new random-access JSON alternative
by dietr1ch on Thursday March 19, 2026 @11:04AM
(#47440719)
Well, JSON had no random access to begin with, so maybe that's on needing JSON.
Maybe a query over the random-access file then converted into JSON would work?
Re:RX – a new random-access JSON alternative
by Gormo on Wednesday March 25, 2026 @11:47AM
(#47518978)
Right -- that's exactly the point. JSON is sequential data, and has no mechanism for random access. The previous comment described piping the JSON into jq as a solution for querying specific bits of data out of a JSON stream, which is consistent with what you're suggesting here, but still isn't a solution for random access.
Re:RX – a new random-access JSON alternative
by creationix on Thursday March 19, 2026 @01:39PM
(#47443032)
> What might be interesting is to have a tool that processes full JSON data and creates a b-tree index on specified keys. Then you could run searches against the index that return byte offsets you can use for actual random access on the original JSON.
I did build that once. But keeping track of the index is a pain. Sometimes I was able to generate the index on-demand and cache it in some ephemeral storage, but overall it didn't work out so well.
This system with RX will work better because I get the indexes built-in to the data file and can always convert it back to JSON if needed.
What might be interesting is to have a tool that processes full JSON data and creates a b-tree index on specified keys. Then you could run searches against the index that return byte offsets you can use for actual random access on the original JSON.
OTOH, this is basically just recreating a database, just using raw JSON as its storage format.