[Building Sakai] significance of hex USER_ID and placement

[Matthew Jones]

The format is a standard called UUID. The format is defined in RFC-4122 [1].
Some more examples and libraries in various languages to generate this
number listed on the wikipedia page. [2]

This was initially chosen because this ID has a VERY low probability of
collision and it would make for migration or merging of data between systems
very easy (Like for import/export). However, very few people actually do
this currently in production.

[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4122
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier

On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 3:29 PM, <bruceballou at olk12.com> wrote:

> Hello All,
>
> A question about the hex USER_ID number.
>
> I understand that it is a unique number for internal processing, but could
> someone explain the significance of it's structure:
>
> 6e6174d1-29af-46f5-acbb-5be0ac32ea8d
>
> The way I see this is 5 segments, consisting of 8h-4h-4h-4h-12h in each
> USER_ID.
>
> I am looking to load a lot of users through a MySQL using 2 statements, one
> that updates SAKAI_USER and SAKAI_USER_ID_MAP.
>
> I have found a way to create the unique hex number in an excel spreadsheet,
> I output it to a csv file and load the data into the tables.
>
> I was told that by uploading users this way, a couple of things don't work
> correctly, such as portfolios.
>
> I guess the base question is where else does this USER_ID number get put
> that it used by some of the modules?
>
> Sorry so chatty, just want to give enough info for folks to process.
>
> Thanx,
>
> Bruce
>
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