SIMPLE AUTHORITY SERIAL SERIAL NUMBER
SIMPLE AUTHORITY SERIAL REGISTRATION

GUID libraries for PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python.

And if we do? We’ll start using GUIDs with more digits. Trust me, we won’t run out of GUIDs anytime soon. It’s a mind-boggling amount of items, and it’s hard to get our heads around it. Each person gets a personal copy of the internet, every second, for a billion years. Even crazier, let’s say each person gets their own copy of the internet every second. Now let’s say everyone on Earth gets their own copy of the internet, to keep track of their stuff. We can assign a GUID for each of these documents. Think about every wikipedia article, every news item on CNN, every product in Amazon, every blog post from any author. Let’s call it a trillion (10^12) for kicks. Think about how big the Internet is: Google has billions of web pages in its index.

Won’t we run out if people get GUID-crazy, assigning them for everything from their pets to their favorite bubble gum flavor? When learning about GUIDs, it feels like 39 measly digits aren’t enough.

SIMPLE AUTHORITY SERIAL SERIAL NUMBER

GUIDs give you a unique serial number that can be used on any item in the universe. There are so many GUIDs that you can use them to number everything and not run out. It’s up to the person reading the GUID to figure out the context of the GUID. Social Security Number 123-45-6789 is different from ISBN 123456789 which is different from barcode 123456789.

SIMPLE AUTHORITY SERIAL REGISTRATION

With regular registration numbers, you start counting at 1 and numbers can overlap. A GUID can be used for people, cars, files, webpages, colors, anything. If you pick a huge random number (39 digits long), it’s really unlikely that someone will pick the same one. This gives us 2^128 or about 10^38 numbers. The format is a well-defined sequence of 32 hex digits grouped into chunks of 8-4-4-4-12. They are usually 128 bits long and look like this in hexadecimal: GUIDs are large, enormous numbers that are nearly guaranteed to be unique. The problem with counting is that we want to create ID numbers without the management headache. Can people guess what the next ID will be? How many IDs have been issued?.Can IDs be shared between products? Is Social Security Number 1 different from ISBN 1?.Who handles simultaneous requests and eliminates duplicates?.Who does the counting? A central authority?.Just start with ISBN #1 and add one for each new book. “We don’t need no stinkin’ GUIDs,” you may be thinking between gulps of Top Ramen, “I’ll just use regular numbers and start counting up from 1.” You may see the term UUID tossed about (universally unique identifier), a nitpicky word for those whose numbers are unique not only within the globe, but throughout the entire universe.Īny way you title it, GUIDs or UUIDs are just big, gigantic ID numbers. “John Smith” may be many people, but Social Security Number 123-45-6789 refers to one person exactly.Ī GUID (globally unique identifier) is a bigger, badder version of this type of ID number. Numbers help us reference items unambiguously. Cars have VINs, even people have social security numbers. Books have ISBNs and products have barcodes.

Simple authority serial