Is something like PLV8 exist in Microsoft SQL Server?

Question

Is something like PLV8 exist in Microsoft SQL Server (JavaScript procedural language add-on for Microsoft SQL Server)?

Answer 1

You can utilise the CLR integration in MS SQL Server, and write managed code (C# / VB.Net / possibly other languages) that you will be able to execute from within SQL Server.

Having said that, the fact that such a possibility exists doesn't necessarily imply that it should be used. Very few tasks actually benefit from being implemented in managed code compared to T-SQL, such as (the list is by no means complete):

• Computationally heavy string manipulations, including regexps (the latter has no alternative in T-SQL);
• Communication with objects external to SQL Server (file system, various API endpoints, etc.);
• Possibility to implement autonomous transactions.

Before going this way, make sure your team understands performance and security implications related to this approach, as they are many. The aforementioned link gives you a good starting point.

Answer 2

Sql Server is licensed per core, and it's not cheap. As a result, this isn't something the large Sql Server customers who drive Sql Server sales numbers (and therefore feature priority) would ever ask for, because it would multiply the number of very expensive cores needed to handle the same data. Instead, this kind of thing will go into the application or service layers, which aren't licensed per core. Also, these application services are much easier to scale out to farms of multiple machines.

That said, you can use CLR and xp_cmdshell to accomplish similar tasks, and recent versions have some native JSON processing.