Hi All,

My User class has Set<Audit> for audit tracking. When it is updated, a new Audit object will be added to the collection.

@Entity
public class User {
...
@ElementCollection
@CollectionTable(name = "user_audit", joinColumns = @JoinColumn(name = "user_id"))
private Set<Audit> audits;
...
}

@Embeddable
public class Audit {
...
}

When a web page posts a modified user object back to server, its audits value is null. What I want to do is to update the user object and add a new audit entry in database. It can be done easily with update and insert SQL queries. However, with Hibernate I have to retrieve the audits, add new entry to the set, set it as audits value in the user object, and update the User.

Is there a better/more efficient way to accomplish the job (without loading the audit set from database)?

Thank you in advance,
-ZJ