# How to Handle Complex JSON Structures in Lenses SQL Queries

**URL:** <https://ask.lenses.io/t/how-to-handle-complex-json-structures-in-lenses-sql-queries/423>\
**Category:** Lenses SQL\
**Created:** [August 30, 2025, 12:59pm UTC](https://ask.lenses.io/t/how-to-handle-complex-json-structures-in-lenses-sql-queries/423 "2025-08-30T12:59:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![lawotid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b5e925/32.png) [@lawotid](https://ask.lenses.io/u/lawotid)\
**Post date:** [August 30, 2025, 12:59pm UTC](https://ask.lenses.io/t/how-to-handle-complex-json-structures-in-lenses-sql-queries/423/1 "2025-08-30T12:59:17Z")

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Hello

I have been working with Kafka topics that contain deeply nested JSON structures, and while Lenses SQL has been great for querying; I am running into challenges when trying to extract and flatten specific fields for analysis. 😇

In particular, when arrays and nested objects are mixed, the queries start to get complicated, and performance sometimes drops noticeably.🤔

I am wondering what the best practices are for handling these scenarios. Should I pre-process the JSON before ingestion, or are there advanced SQL functions within Lenses that can efficiently flatten and query this type of data?🤔 Checked [JSON | Lenses Docs](https://docs.lenses.io/latest/user-guide/sql-reference/functions/json) guide related to this and found it quite informative. When I reviewed [what is javascript](https://www.igmguru.com/blog/what-is-javascript), I noticed its simple JSON handling, and it made me think about whether Lenses SQL supports comparable transformations.🙂

Has anyone here designed an efficient strategy for working with deeply nested JSON in Lenses SQL, particularly when balancing readability, maintainability, and query performance? 🤔

Any tips, examples, or real-world use cases would be really helpful for anyone facing similar challenges.

Thank you !!🙂

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**Author:** ![discourse\_ai\_spam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c68b51/32.png) [@discourse\_ai\_spam](https://ask.lenses.io/u/discourse_ai_spam)\
**Post date:** [August 30, 2025, 12:59pm UTC](https://ask.lenses.io/t/how-to-handle-complex-json-structures-in-lenses-sql-queries/423/2 "2025-08-30T12:59:20Z")

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**Author:** ![system](https://europe1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/uploads/lenses1/original/1X/5f10dfa290737c53b22c180700582e7ceb0088b4.png) [@system](https://ask.lenses.io/u/system)\
**Post date:** [August 30, 2025, 6:53pm UTC](https://ask.lenses.io/t/how-to-handle-complex-json-structures-in-lenses-sql-queries/423/3 "2025-08-30T18:53:03Z")

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**Author:** ![james1985](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c57346/32.png) [@james1985](https://ask.lenses.io/u/james1985)\
**Post date:** [August 30, 2025, 6:53pm UTC](https://ask.lenses.io/t/how-to-handle-complex-json-structures-in-lenses-sql-queries/423/4 "2025-08-30T18:53:23Z")

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Can you show an example of a JSON event with the nesting?