Open Stack

+1
Sounds like some IPV6 discussions back when the standards were being debated.  We could debate bit-allocation forever.  Why can't we use UUIDs?

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4122

"""
2.  Motivation


   One of the main reasons for using UUIDs is that no centralized
   authority is required to administer them (although one format uses
   IEEE 802 node identifiers, others do not).  As a result, generation
   on demand can be completely automated, and used for a variety of
   purposes.  The UUID generation algorithm described here supports very
   high allocation rates of up to 10 million per second per machine if
   necessary, so that they could even be used as transaction IDs.

   UUIDs are of a fixed size (128 bits) which is reasonably small
   compared to other alternatives.  This lends itself well to sorting,
   ordering, and hashing of all sorts, storing in databases, simple
   allocation, and ease of programming in general.

   Since UUIDs are unique and persistent, they make excellent Uniform
   Resource Names.  The unique ability to generate a new UUID without a
   registration process allows for UUIDs to be one of the URNs with the
   lowest minting cost.

"""

Brian Schott
bfschott at gmail.com



On Mar 22, 2011, at 2:53 PM, Jay Pipes wrote:

> I know you don't want to resurrect a past discussion. But, UUIDs are
> designed to solve these kind of problems, frankly. The decision to go
> with integer IDs is a poor one, and will be negatively affecting the
> scalability and architecture of our systems well into the future.
> 
> I'd love to see a discussion around moving away from internal integer
> identifiers and towards UUID internal identifiers at the next summit.
> 
> Just my 2 cents,
> -jay
> 
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