Scribd
Upload
82 views

The 2 Dimensions of Audit Information

Hibernate Envers allows querying audit log data from a database. It stores audit information in a second dimension by creating a new revision for each transaction that creates, updates, or deletes an audited entity. There are two perspectives for querying the audit log - vertical queries retrieve revisions where an entity was changed, while horizontal queries retrieve data for a specific revision. Vertical and horizontal queries can be used to find audit information for a specific entity or revision.

Uploaded by

Adolf
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
82 views

The 2 Dimensions of Audit Information

Hibernate Envers allows querying audit log data from a database. It stores audit information in a second dimension by creating a new revision for each transaction that creates, updates, or deletes an audited entity. There are two perspectives for querying the audit log - vertical queries retrieve revisions where an entity was changed, while horizontal queries retrieve data for a specific revision. Vertical and horizontal queries can be used to find audit information for a specific entity or revision.

Uploaded by

Adolf
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 4

Hibernate Envers – Query data from your audit log

The 2 dimensions of audit information


Hibernate Envers creates a new revision for each transaction that
creates, updates or deletes an audited entity and stores it in the
database. That adds a 2nd dimension to your data structure as you
can see in the following graphic.

You can use 2 different perspectives when you look at your audit log.
The vertical perspective looks at an entity instance and shows you in
which revisions it was created, edited or deleted. The horizontal
perspective looks at a revision and shows you the information stored
in your database at that point in time.

www.thoughts-on-java.org
Hibernate Envers – Query data from your audit log
Create a vertical query
Vertical queries allow you to retrieve the revisions in which an entity
instance was created, edited or deleted. You can create such a query
by calling the forRevisionsOfEntity(Class c, boolean
selectedEntitiesOnly, boolean selectDeletedEntities) method.
The selectedEntitiesOnly parameter defines if you want to retrieve a
list of entities which changed at the selected revisions or if you want
to retrieve a list of arrays with an instance of the affected entity, a
revision entity, and a RevisionType enum. This parameter has no
effect when you define a projection for your query.
The effect of the selectDeletedEntities is pretty obvious. When you
set it to true, your query will also return deleted entities. All
attributes of a deleted entity except its id are null.
The following code snippt returns the number of the first revision in
which the Book entity with a given id had the title “Hibernate Tips –
64 Tips for your day to day work”.

AuditQuery q =
auditReader.createQuery().forRevisionsOfEntity(Book.class,
false, true);
q.addProjection(AuditEntity.revisionNumber().min());
q.add(AuditEntity.id().eq(b.getId()));
q.add(AuditEntity.property(“title”).eq(“Hibernate Tips – 64
Tips for your day to day work”));
Number revision = (Number) q.getSingleResult();

www.thoughts-on-java.org
Hibernate Envers – Query data from your audit log
Create a horizontal query
You define horizontal queries in a similar way as the vertical queries I
showed you before. You just need to call the forEntitiesAtRevision
method instead of the forRevisionsOfEntity when you create the
AuditQuery.
The following code snippet shows an AuditQuery which returns all
Book entities in revision 2 which title contained “JPA” or “Hibernate”
and which were published by a Publisher which name contained
“Manning”.

AuditQuery q =
auditReader.createQuery().forEntitiesAtRevision(Book.class,
2);
q.traverseRelation(“publisher”, JoinType.LEFT, “p”);
q.add(AuditEntity.and(
AuditEntity.or(AuditEntity.property(“title”).ilike(“JPA”,
MatchMode.ANYWHERE),
AuditEntity.property(“title”).ilike(“Hibernate”,
MatchMode.ANYWHERE)),
AuditEntity.property(“p”, “name”).ilike(“Manning”)));
q.addOrder(AuditEntity.property(“title”).asc());
List<Book> audit = q.getResultList();

www.thoughts-on-java.org
Hibernate Envers – Query data from your audit log
Get active revision at a given date
If you just want to get an entity that was active at a given time, you
can call the find method of the AuditReader and provide a
java.util.Date instead of a revision number. You can see an example of
it in the following code snippet.

AuditReader auditReader = AuditReaderFactory.get(em);

Book auditedBook = auditReader


.find(Book.class, b.getId(), created);
log.info(“Book [“+auditedBook+”] at [“+created+”].”);

www.thoughts-on-java.org

You might also like