Or use something next-generation like JooQ.

I was thinking about GQL in this context recently.

In GQL you can query users, for example and select all fields except for a base64 picture of that user, so that the request is more performant.

However in the underlying implementation, you might be pulling the picture of the user anyway, but the GQL layer is simply dropping it because it's not in the requested set.

There's an argument, then, instead of hand-writing queries that have and don't have the picture (which is acceptable), we should write this backend code to take advantage of frameworks (such as apollo) that make the requested field set available, and then call the appropriate APIs to only fetch the requested set of fields.

Since most ORMs have this feature available, you can still use the ORM, you just need to use the lesser used feature of selecting only some columns.

This would result in the ultimate performance. This is also why I have always thought GQL (or something like GQL) will eventually replace plain old REST.