Can I convert a VARCHAR field body to unquoted JSON result in SQL Server 2016 CTP 2.X?
You'll need to wait for CTP 3 to use things like OPENJSON and JSON_VALUE. These constructs simply didn't ship in the CTPs up to and including CTP 2.4. That doesn't mean there isn't some way to get the result you want right now, but the amount of time and effort you might spend doing so is probably not worth it, especially if the functionality you need will be available in the next CTP, which should ship soon.