Thanks for the reply... i probably will look into writing my own implementation. Never really thought of it...
Generating GUIDs on server, while i can do that, just makes more sense if it's done in the flex app itself. and yes... these IDs will be used as primary keys in my database... at least that's the current design i'm thinking about. I'm generating an XML document in my flex app, where each node/element and its attributes represent a single row and child rows in a parent child/foreign key relationship. When i call a web service, i get my xml document which contains pre- existing primary keys but when i add elements that have not yet had been persisted to the database i don't want to both send up my xml data and then turn right around and pull it back down just so my new xml elements/nodes have the correct primary keys attached. That's especially important when i save/send up the xml a second and third time. If i can assign my IDs earlier in the process, that solves that issue. I still have to check pre-existence on my server side when i actually commit my changes to either run an insert or update sql statement. --- In [email protected], Jim Cheng <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > scott_flex wrote: > > Is there no function or object to generate a GUID, a true globally > > unique identifier? > > Just write your own--it's dirt simple. FYI, GUIDs and UUIDs aren't > actually guaranteed to be absolutely unique--however, given the number > of random bits involved, a repeat is statistically highly unlikely to > happen. > > They're essentially just concatenated random bits, although in some > cases a few bits are derived from MAC addresses (per version 1 UUIDs, > which you won't have to access to) or hashes of a URL (version 3 and 5 > UUIDs). > > See: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globally_Unique_Identifier > > http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4122.txt > > If you need it to play with a server and you're worried about repeats > enough to expend some developer cycles, a better use of your time is to > hash the GUIDs that you're given on the server-side and do a quick > search for a collision prior to creating a database entry. This tactic > also gets you around the possibility of malicious folk passing in faked > GUIDs that they know may result in a collision. > > Jim Cheng > effectiveUI >
