->json() still creates nvarchar(max) columns on SQL Server 2025 despite native JSON datatype support

[martijnvt1981]

Laravel Version

12.40.2

PHP Version

8.3.25

Database Driver & Version

Microsoft SQL Server 2025 for MacOS Tahoe (26.1) (using Orbstack's Rosetta and Docker platform settings to emulate Intel)

Description

There is a problem with Laravel's Schema Builder when creating JSON columns on SQL Server 2025. Although SQL Server 2025 introduces native JSON datatype support, the ->json() method still creates nvarchar(max) columns instead of using the new native JSON datatype. This results in underutilization of important database features and may negatively impact performance and validation.

Moreover, there is no mechanism to detect the SQL Server version and conditionally use the native JSON datatype only when supported. For older SQL Server versions, the current fallback to nvarchar(max) should of course remain for backwards compatibility.

Steps To Reproduce

1. Create a Laravel migration script defining a JSON column:

Schema::create('example_table', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->json('data');
});

2. Run this migration on a SQL Server 2025 database.
3. Check the datatype of the created column in the database.
4. You'll see it's a nvarchar datatype instead of json

[hafezdivandari]

Fixing this on a patch release would be a bc breaking change, you may use rawColumn instead for now:

$table->rawColumn('data', 'json');

[rodrigopedra]

Although SQL Server 2025 introduces native JSON datatype support, the ->json() method still creates nvarchar(max) columns instead of using the new native JSON datatype.

In addition to this change being a BC, as pointed out by @hafezdivandari, I believe the reason the new feature isn't available is that no one sent a PR yet.

My feeling over the years is that SQL Server features are usually added by PRs sent by developers who actively use it.

For example, many years ago, when I used to work in a company that used SQL Server, I sent a PR to allow table-valued functions in the FROM clause (#11575).

You can try sending a PR to add this feature.

The Illuminate\Database\Connection@getServerVersion() method should provide the SQL Server version being used. It just delegates to a PDO@getAttribute(PDO::ATTR_SERVER_VERSION) call.

If the pdo_sqlsrv extension exposes this constant, it should help in checking whether that feature is supported.

If that works, you can take inspiration from how the MySQL and MariaDB grammar classes decide if the native UUID type is supported based on the server's version.

[martijnvt1981]

Thanks! I'm not sure what the usual procedures were. I'll work on a PR later on.

[github-actions]

Thank you for reporting this issue!

As Laravel is an open source project, we rely on the community to help us diagnose and fix issues as it is not possible to research and fix every issue reported to us via GitHub.

If possible, please make a pull request fixing the issue you have described, along with corresponding tests. All pull requests are promptly reviewed by the Laravel team.

Thank you!