What MySQL Output is
Not a file format at all. It is what the MySQL command line prints when you run a query: a box drawn with plus signs, dashes and pipes, with a line underneath saying how many rows were in the set.
Anyone who has run a query in a terminal and wants the answer in a spreadsheet.
What JSON is
JSON is a text format for nested data: objects with named keys, arrays, strings, numbers, booleans and null. It has no date type and no comments.
Every web API, most configuration files and anything that talks to JavaScript.
What changes when you convert MySQL Output to JSON
The rules and the trailing row count are dropped and the pipes become column boundaries. MySQL prints an unset value as the four characters NULL, which arrives here as an empty cell, because that is what NULL means and because a literal string of NULL in a spreadsheet is worse than a blank. Paste it as CSV instead and every row becomes one column full of pipes, which is why this is its own format.
You choose the shape. An array of objects is the default and the one most code expects. A 2D array is smaller. Column arrays suit charting libraries. A keyed object suits lookups by id.
What carries over from MySQL Output to JSON
One property of the MySQL has no home in JSON, and it is worth knowing which before you convert.
JSON has no header row. The column names are repeated as keys on every record instead, which is why the result is bigger on disk than the table it came from.
Both formats record types, so numbers, booleans and nulls survive as themselves rather than as text.
The identifier 007 comes out of the JSON as 007. Reading it as a number would have made it 7, and an id that changes value is worse than one that stays text.
The role "Analyst, data" survives with its comma, in one cell rather than split across two. That is the first thing to check in any converted table, and the usual place a JSON file goes wrong.
The quotes around Jonah "Jo" Pryce are escaped with a backslash in the JSON.