Is JSON encoding more useful for saving data?

Data structures (such as tables) are automatically encoded to JSON upon set request to ROBLOX's data store service. For instance, there is no difference between...

DataStore:SetAsync(key, table)

####and

DataStore:SetAsync(key, JSONEncode(table))

Encoding a table with JSON for the purpose of saving is redundant.

However

Although you don't need to encode a table in JSON to save it, you may want to. There is a character limit to the JSON-formatted data that you can save under one key (I think it's 2^16 characters or something like that). So, perhaps one might want to encode a table before saving it to check the length of the encoded data to see if it will save successfully. For example...

local HttpService = game:GetService("HttpService")

local table = {}
local JSON_table = HttpService:JSONEncode(table)

-- check size limit of the data being saved
if (#JSON_table >= 2^16) then
	-- don't save
else
	-- save
end

This is just one out of other potential uses of encoding data in JSON before saving it. I hope this helped. If you have any questions, just let me know.

####Disclaimer:

This is based off of my old knowledge of DataStoreService. Although I don't think any of this has changed, I will update this answer accordingly if I find out any new information.