RevisionEntity

RevisionEntity is a concept used in Hibernate Envers, a module for auditing changes to JPA and Hibernate entities. A revision entity represents the metadata associated with a single revision or audit event. It is defined as a JPA entity annotated with @RevisionEntity and is responsible for persisting revision-level information such as an identifier and a timestamp.

By default, Envers provides a base revision entity (often named DefaultRevisionEntity) that stores core revision data. Developers can use this default structure or define a custom revision entity by extending the base class or creating a new entity and marking it with @RevisionEntity. A revision entity can specify a RevisionListener, which implements the RevisionListener interface to populate fields when a new revision is created, for example by capturing the current user or application context.

Fields commonly associated with a revision entity include a revision number and a revision timestamp. These fields are typically annotated with @RevisionNumber and @RevisionTimestamp, respectively. The revision entity is stored in a revision information table (often REVINFO), and each audited change in audited entities is linked to a specific revision via references in the corresponding audit tables (e.g., Entity_AUD) that reference the revision identifier.

Extensibility is a key feature: developers can add custom metadata to a revision entity, enabling richer audit trails. This allows organizations to include contextual information such as user identifiers, application components, or security details alongside each revision.

See also: Hibernate Envers, RevisionListener, DefaultRevisionEntity, @RevisionEntity, @RevisionNumber, @RevisionTimestamp.