High-Performance Java Persistence Newsletter, Issue 27

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Imagine having a tool that can automatically detect JPA and Hibernate performance issues. Wouldn’t that be just awesome?

Well, Hypersistence Optimizer is that tool! And it works with Spring Boot, Spring Framework, Jakarta EE, Java EE, Quarkus, or Play Framework.

So, enjoy spending your time on the things you love rather than fixing performance issues in your production system on a Saturday night!

Introduction

Welcome to a new issue of the High-Performance Java Persistence Newsletter in which we share articles, videos, workshops, and StackOverflow answers that are very relevant to any developer who interacts with a database system using Java.

Articles

The pick of this edition is this article which shows you how MySQL stores data/time information in TIMESTAMP and DATETIME columns and how you can handle time zone information.

On the 23rd of May, Hibernate turned 20. To celebrate this anniversary, I wrote this article, in which I’m sharing my Hibernate journey.

If you’re using SQL Server, then you should learn how Foreign Key locking works, as it can impact concurrency if you include all the table columns during an UPDATE, which is how the default Hibernate UPDATE works. For more details about this topic and why you should use @DynamicUpdate with SQL Server, then check out this article.

Speaking of @DynamicUpdate, if you are using JSON columns, then you should also set the entity to use a dynamic UPDATE statement, as otherwise, the JSON column will be sent to the database on every property change, even if the JSON column hasn’t been modified. For more details, check out this article.

PostgreSQL 14 will add a new JSON path expression that will allow you to better locate nested attributes. For more details, check out this article.

Using a RANDOM function in the ORDER BY clause allows you to shuffle results. However, as explained in this article, the performance might not be great if the table is fairly large. So, if you’re using PostgreSQL, this article explains how you can emulate this feature using a spatial column that can have an associated spgist index.

If you’re Spring Data JPA, then JPA Entity Graphs can be useful with @Query methods. For more details about how JPA Entity Graphs work, you can read this article.

Best Tweets

Here are the best tweets I posted since the last newsletter:

Today, @Hibernate turns 20!

Happy birthday to one of the most successful @Java data access frameworks and to @1ovthafew for creating it! pic.twitter.com/BOZkZzaNOU
— Vlad Mihalcea (@vlad_mihalcea) May 23, 2021

Frameworks come and go.

Relational databases stay.
— Vlad Mihalcea (@vlad_mihalcea) May 22, 2021

Next time you debug your application step into the framework code to see how it works.

Not only that you'll understand the framework better, but you can discover new programming techniques as well.
— Vlad Mihalcea (@vlad_mihalcea) June 6, 2021

Don't put work above your own health. Your career is a very long marathon, not a short sprint.
— Vlad Mihalcea (@vlad_mihalcea) June 1, 2021

If you try and fail, be proud.

Most people won't even try.
— Vlad Mihalcea (@vlad_mihalcea) May 25, 2021

Project Releases

Hibernate 5.5.0 has been released, adding support for Jakarta JPA 2.2 and 3.0.

If you are using Hibernate 5.4, then you might want to upgrade to the 5.4.32 version, which fixes several issues and add new improvements.

The 2.11 version of the Hibernate Types project has been released, and it provides a new JsonType that works with PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, and H2 without having to do any change in your mapping. With this improvement, you can address the portability issues of using DB-specific JSON columns.

If you’re using PostgreSQL, then you might be interested in the 13.3 release, which provides several bug fixes.

And, if you’re using MySQL, then check out the 8.0.25 release.