title: Best Audit trail mechanism for Spring + JPA + Hibernate application
body: <p>I am using Spring 3.0 + JPA2 + Hibernate 4.1 with MySQL 5.5
  I am looking to record 5 fields in my tables for audit trail purposes - lastModifiedByUser, lastModifiedTime, createdByUser, createdTime, isActive</p>
  
  <p>I am not deleting any data from the tables, just marking them off as isActive false.</p>
  
  <p>What is the best tool to help me record these audit fields in my tables ?
  I am wondering if DB triggers are not the best idea, specially since modifying / creating user  name is also recorded.</p>