NoSQL refers to non-relational databases that are distributed, open source, and horizontally scalable. They are often used for storing large amounts of data across many servers. JSON is a common data format used in NoSQL databases, as it allows flexible, nested data structures like objects, arrays, numbers, strings, true/false, and null. The document provides examples of how data from relational SQL databases can be represented in JSON format in a NoSQL database, including cases for single tables, one-to-many relationships, many-to-many relationships, trees, and comments.