I Ignored These JPA Methods for Years-Now Spring Boot Application 10 Faster

"After years of ignoring some key JPA methods and annotations, I finally explored them - and what happened next was shocking: my application became up to 10× faster with fewer queries, less memory use, and way cleaner code. 🎉 If you are not a Medium Member then Click hereto read free. 🔄 1. JpaRepository.existsById() Instead of findById() If you only need to check if something exists: if (userRepository.existsById(id)) { // no need to load entire entity} ✅ Why it's faster: Avoids unnecessary entity loading and reduces SQL size."

"💾2. saveAll() - The Implicit Batch Saver For years, I called save() in a loop - like this: for (User user : users) { userRepository.save(user);} But that's inefficient. Instead, use: userRepository.saveAll(users); Hint: saveAll() still calls save() for each entity internally, but the persistence context can optimize batching if you configure it correctly (e.g., using hibernate.jdbc.batch_size)."

Exploring overlooked JPA repository methods and configuration can yield major performance gains: up to 10× faster execution, fewer SQL queries, lower memory usage, and cleaner code. Use existsById when only existence needs checking to avoid loading full entities and reduce SQL payload. Replace repetitive save() calls in loops with saveAll to allow the persistence context to optimize operations and enable JDBC batching. Configure batching parameters (for example hibernate.jdbc.batch_size) so the persistence context groups statements efficiently. Note that saveAll still delegates to save per entity, but batching and the persistence context reduce overhead significantly.

Read at Medium