Fair point. I think how ImportJSON handles that is by still flattening the data, but allowing you to specify the noInherit parameter to hide or show values in subsequent rows from the parent in the heirarchy. So yes, it’s flat data, but with proper filters and self relations, I think you could still work with it. Messy, but I think still possible.
Maybe if Glide decided to go down a similar path, they could blow out the data into separate tables. Or maybe they could allow us to work with it as an object (object.parent{n}.child{n}.item{n}.value). It’ll be exciting to see how this all develops in the future.