title: Storing large JSON - binary or text
body: <p>I have a read a lot of posts and I'm finding a lot of different responses.</p>
  
  <p>Running MYSQL 5.7, I have a large JSON object that does not need querying, just storing. Using <code>JSON</code> seems inefficient - I don't need to validate it. What's the best solution in this case? <code>BLOB</code> or <code>TEXT</code> are the obvious choices, but what's the best choice out of the two?</p>
  
  <p>Binary needs to be converted back to text (how do you best do this? PHP or during the SQL query?) wilst text just needs to be returned. I'd really appreciate any clarification...</p>