Will Spring Data JPA Fail Under Load? Lessons from the New Nucleic Acid Code

On Thursday night a notice appeared that starting April 9 a new nucleic‑acid testing system would be launched, introducing a new identifier called the nucleic acid code .

That same evening many netizens discovered an entry on the Suishenban platform, but clicking it resulted in an error.

Because the system had not yet been fully deployed, there was little feedback, and people began speculating about the technology stack and possible causes of the error.

I even joked that performance problems might arise since, in my view, few Chinese developers are proficient with Hibernate.

Today, when trying to obtain the nucleic acid code, I faced various difficulties: the page would not refresh, sometimes it showed a crowd, other times it returned a 504 error.

I tried at noon, and later at 4‑5 pm many friends reported being stuck as well.

Perhaps the system was rushed and not properly prepared, but no one knows for sure.

Now I want to share why I think using Spring Data JPA could cause crashes under heavy load.

First, the commonly used MyBatis framework in China relies on developers writing raw SQL. When a team has a DBA or strong database experts, they can optimize the SQL effectively, and the success of the project depends on the team’s mastery of SQL and Java.

When we use Spring Data JPA, many SQL statements are hidden behind the framework. Developers enjoy writing Java code instead of SQL, but they often do not know the exact SQL that will be executed.

This makes performance optimization difficult. Professional DBAs usually lack knowledge of how Spring Data JPA translates code to SQL, so they cannot perform static analysis. Developers unfamiliar with Hibernate can easily write low‑performance code, not because the framework itself is slow, but due to misuse.

Therefore, in high‑concurrency systems, the choice of data‑access framework must be made carefully. It’s not that Spring Data JPA is unusable, but you need people who understand it well; otherwise performance issues are likely. MyBatis, by requiring explicit SQL, is often easier for Chinese developers to understand and control.

What are your thoughts on these two frameworks? Feel free to share your opinions in the comments.