Production CRUD in Java Without the Framework Tax

A practical walkthrough of SQL-First persistence: no XML, no Mapper interfaces, no generated queries. I maintain a Java backend that handles ~1M requests/day. For persistence, we used to run MyBatis. The XML was manageable at first, then it wasn't. Dynamic conditions became <if> tag soup. A simple join query needed three files and two languages. We switched to a simpler approach. Here's how it works for the most common case: single-table CRUD. What You Need Java 21+ Spring Boot (any 3.x) A database (H2 for the demo, MySQL/PostgreSQL for production) That's it. No XML parser, no code generator, no annotation processor. The Project pom.xml src/main/java/example/ DemoApplication.java user/ User.java -- entity UserDao.java -- data access UserCond.java -- query conditions src/main/resources/ application.yml schema.sql Three Java files for a complete CRUD API. The Entity @Data @Builder @Table ( "sys_user" ) public class User { @Id private Long id ; private String name ; private Integer age ; private String email ; // ... other fields // These four are auto-managed: private LocalDateTime createTime ; private Long createBy ; private LocalDateTime updateTime ; private Long updateBy ; private Byte dr ; // 0 = active, 1 = soft-deleted } @Table maps to the database table. @Id marks the primary key (Snowflake ID by default). The audit fields and soft-delete marker are handled automatically—you don't set them in business code. The DAO @Repository public class UserDao extends BaseDao < User > { // Empty. All CRUD methods inherited. } BaseDao provides save , saveBatch , update , delete , findById , list , page , count , exists . For single-table operations, this is all you need. The Conditions @Getter @Setter @Builder public class UserCond extends BaseCondition { private String name ; private Integer ageMin ; private Integer ageMax ; private Byte dr ; private Object [] ids ; @Override protected void addCondition () { and ( "name LIKE" , name , 3 ); // 3 = %value% and ( "age >=" , ag