Java OOP, How can I design a class with many list type fields to a single class?

Question

I have a class with many fields of type List<> because I need to save a log history for every change. For example:

public class Student {
    private int id;
    private List<Log> name;
    private List<Log> lastname;
    private List<Log> phone;
}

public class Log {
    private int id;
    private Date date;
    private User user;
    private String content;
}

So, every time a user make an update, it will be saved on log table. The problem is I don't know how to make the relationship between them. I'm using hibernate. And that is only Student class, but I have about 10 more classes with the same scenario.

Is there a better way to do that? maybe a pattern design?

Answer 1

From a design standpoint, I would prefer to have a versioned Student table, with a timestamp for each version. Then you can easily determine what lastName and firstName were at a given point in time.

Hibernate supports a few different approaches to this as well.