title: How to check and avoid duplicate records in a MySQL database table?
body: <p>I am using Spring Boot, Maven, Hibernate and MySQL</p>
  
  <p>I am trying determine if is better to programmatically find out if a record already exist in the database --> table or if is better to do that by modifying the database table to not allow duplicates.</p>
  
  <p>Any suggestions?</p>