AWS provides this guide for how to use spring data MongoDB and connect to AWS Document DB.
When I tried this with an existing application I found all DBRef usages not to work - seeing errors like Query failed with error code 2 with name '' and error message 'Bad value' on server localhost:27017; nested exception is com.mongodb.MongoQueryException: Query failed with error code 2 with name '' and error message 'Bad value' on server localhost:27017 which the error doesn't help much other than makes me think DBRef isn't supported.
AWS also has this document which lists MongoDB operators not supported by DocumentDB. It mentions DBPointer but doesn't mention DBRef.
DBRef is something that could refactor to use explicit ID references but in general is this a recommended setup or could it cause future problems with upgrades or unsupported/unknown issues with performance or other Spring data incompatibility with AWS documentDB?