Choosing Between Them

Neither is the safe default. Each one fits a different shape of application, on the same two axes the previous two cards just demonstrated.

Spring Data JDBC vs Spring Data JPA
Compared on	Spring Data JDBC	Spring Data JPA
Persistence context	None	Yes, with dirty checking
Lazy loading	None — loads in full	Yes, and it can fail outside a transaction
SQL behaviour	Predictable, close to what you wrote	Can be surprising — generated, sometimes deferred
Fits	Simple, mostly-flat domains; microservices; predictable CRUD	Complex relationships, rich domain models, an existing Hibernate investment

A microservice with a flat domain and predictable SQL requirements is Spring Data JDBC's case — there's nothing complex enough for a persistence context to be worth its cost. A domain with genuine relationship depth, where a reader benefits from letting the framework manage loading and change-tracking rather than doing both by hand, is JPA's case. Neither one is "the safer default": each is safer for the domain it fits.