It depends on how willing you are to allow your object graph to match your relational schema. The key is to let SQL be SQL. I wrote one that allows you to load

It depends on how willing you are to allow your object graph to match your relational schema. The key is to let SQL be SQL. I wrote one that allows you to load data using standard SQL resource files, but it handles the persistence automatically: https://github.com/bgard6977/sqorm https://github.com/bgard6977/sqorm Flyway & jOOq take a similar approach: https://www.jooq.org/ https://www.jooq.org/ Taking the SQL-first approach also allows you to serialize without circular reference problems, since you don't just load the data, you also define a path to decompose the graph into a DAG.