title: JPA merge vs. persist
body: <p>So far, my preference has been to always use EntityManager's <code>merge()</code> take care of both insert and update. But I have also noticed that merge performs an additional select queries before update/insert to ensure record does not already exists in the database.</p>
  
  <p>Now that I am working on a project requiring extensive (bulk) inserts to the database. From a performance point of view does it make sense to use persist instead of merge in a scenario where I absolutely know that I am always creating a new instance of objects to be persisted?</p>