class file for org.springframework.data.repository.query.QueryByExampleExecutor not found

Question

I am in the processing of upgrading spring-data-jpa and spring-data-commons dependencies.

Currently, ModuleA uses 1.8.0.RELEASE of data-jpa (which internally uses 1.10.0.RELEASE of jpa-commons.

ModuleB which has a dependency on ModuleA uses 1.9.4.RELEASE of data-jpa (which internally uses 1.11.4.RELEASE of jpa-commons).

I upgraded ModuleA to use 1.9.4 as well and everything still worked without any issues.

Now, when I upgrade ModuleB to pretty much anything above 1.9.x (say 1.10.0.RELEASE), I get the following error:

[FileName.Java] cannot access org.springframework.data.repository.query.QueryByExampleExecutor
class file for org.springframework.data.repository.query.QueryByExampleExecutor not found

I checked ModuleA (1.8.0 and 1.9.4) as well as ModuleB (1.9.4) and could not find a path to QueryByExampleExecutor, so why does it fail when I upgrade further? I did not find any explicit mention of QueryByExampleExecutor.

@Query annotation from import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.Query is used, so it could be coming from that?

Any suggestions?