In dream world, when old version is not found in the AUD table, it's inserted there. Of course, we will not have a correct date for such a "fabricated" version, but saving old version would allow to show what changes were done that resulted in now-new version.

Yes it can even be the only way ! I just realize that if you just ignore this case, like your patch, you're will loose the previous value which is not in the audit table ! Is this the choice you've made in your company ? (to loose all previous value that has not been inserted throught hibernate-envers).

In the application I'm working on, we can't loose it, so we could'nt use your patch. I think that we will today have no to choice but use a solution like @Edison Guo one's...