Scenario: change the quantity of exactly ONE of 3 order items, then save() the whole aggregate — the idiomatic Spring Data JDBC pattern (see Order#withItems). 1. UPDATE "JDBC_ORDER" SET "VERSION" = ?, "CUSTOMER_ID" = ? WHERE "JDBC_ORDER"."ID" = ? AND "JDBC_ORDER"."VERSION" = ? 2. DELETE FROM "JDBC_ORDER_ITEM" WHERE "JDBC_ORDER_ITEM"."ORDER_ID" = ? 3. INSERT INTO "JDBC_ORDER_ITEM" ("ORDER_ID", "ORDER_KEY", "ID", "QUANTITY", "SKU") VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?) 4. SELECT "JDBC_ORDER"."ID" AS "ID", "JDBC_ORDER"."VERSION" AS "VERSION", "JDBC_ORDER"."CUSTOMER_ID" AS "CUSTOMER_ID" FROM "JDBC_ORDER" WHERE "JDBC_ORDER"."ID" = ? 5. SELECT "JDBC_ORDER_ITEM"."ID" AS "ID", "JDBC_ORDER_ITEM"."SKU" AS "SKU", "JDBC_ORDER_ITEM"."QUANTITY" AS "QUANTITY", "JDBC_ORDER_ITEM"."ORDER_KEY" AS "ORDER_KEY" FROM "JDBC_ORDER_ITEM" WHERE "JDBC_ORDER_ITEM"."ORDER_ID" = ? ORDER BY "ORDER_KEY" total statements: 5 DELETE statements: 1 INSERT statements: 1 (but the reload shows 3 rows back: [OrderItem[id=13, sku=SKU-1, quantity=1], OrderItem[id=15, sku=SKU-3, quantity=3], OrderItem[id=14, sku=SKU-2, quantity=999]]) Spring Data JDBC does not diff the collection: saving an aggregate root with a @MappedCollection deletes every existing child row for that parent and reinserts the current collection from scratch, every time — even when only one of three rows actually changed. What it does NOT do is pay for that with N round trips: the three inserts above are one JDBC *batch* — addBatch() three times, executeBatch() once — so this shows as a single "INSERT" line in the log, not three. This is the real trade the "dropping the ORM" article leads with: you give up field-level dirty checking for the aggregate model, but the replace is a delete plus one batched insert, not delete-plus-N-inserts. For a collection with thousands of rows the row churn is still real (every row is rewritten, not just the changed one); see docs/06-when-this-gets-expensive.md.