Eager or lazy loading

Applies to ✅ Open Source Edition   ✅ Express Edition   ✅ Professional Edition   ✅ Enterprise Edition

In jOOQ, you always load data explicitly, never automatically via eager or lazy loading, both of which seem useful at first, but come at a heavy price, or say, complexity tax.

• Eager loading prevents extra round trips when you need the data, but cannot be easily prevented when you do not need the data, so chances are, eager loading is generating too much unnecessary effort
• Lazy loading prevents unnecessary loading when you don't need the data, but generates delayed extra work (the dreaded N+1 problem) when you do need the data

In the JPA ecosystem, a lot of folks advocate using queries to avoid both of the above problems. That's why in jOOQ, the above problems don't exist, because you will always spell out the exact query that you need to produce the data you want.