I am using hibernate with JPA..
In my database the tables have a active indicator column which takes in 0 or 1.

When i update a column on an existing row i should create a new row and
update the active indicator on the existing row to 0 from 1. Which means that i do not update any columns in my tables.I have to create new rows even on updates.

Is there an elegant way in JPA to do this...I am thinking in terms of a common method to all the tables....

any ideas on how to go about this???

Amar,

There is nothing inherently difficult in what you just said, since you are only using a subset of the Hibernate capabilities (i.e, you will just insert).

You can call your business methods whatever you want (e.g "update") and then let you hibernate DAO do the flagging/insertion).

The only difficulty I foresee, is that your Business side can't use the Hibernate row id at all, since this will change on any new update. You will have to ensure that all your tables using this mechanism have alternative (natural, candidate) keys, meaningful on the business side.