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Daniel
Daniel
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Is it possible to design a distributed system to generate unique ids where there is a requirement that every generated id is guaranteed to be unique with no possibility of collision?

I didn't think that this was possible, given the fact that there is a finite number of ids which can fit into some structure. So for instance, if we generate ids with the numbers 0-9, and store them in 32 bytes, then there are at most 10^32 possibilities for ids. This gives a very small possibility that there will be a collision, but there is still a possibility. Am I missing something, or is there a way to engineer a system such there there is guaranteed to never be a collision (i.e., all ids are truly unique?)

Even if we generate ids based on a timestamp, say, then it's still not clear to me that there will never be a collision.

Is it possible to design a system to generate unique ids where there is a requirement that every generated id is guaranteed to be unique with no possibility of collision?

I didn't think that this was possible, given the fact that there is a finite number of ids which can fit into some structure. So for instance, if we generate ids with the numbers 0-9, and store them in 32 bytes, then there are at most 10^32 possibilities for ids. This gives a very small possibility that there will be a collision, but there is still a possibility. Am I missing something, or is there a way to engineer a system such there there is guaranteed to never be a collision (i.e., all ids are truly unique?)

Even if we generate ids based on a timestamp, say, then it's still not clear to me that there will never be a collision.

Is it possible to design a distributed system to generate unique ids where there is a requirement that every generated id is guaranteed to be unique with no possibility of collision?

I didn't think that this was possible, given the fact that there is a finite number of ids which can fit into some structure. So for instance, if we generate ids with the numbers 0-9, and store them in 32 bytes, then there are at most 10^32 possibilities for ids. This gives a very small possibility that there will be a collision, but there is still a possibility. Am I missing something, or is there a way to engineer a system such there there is guaranteed to never be a collision (i.e., all ids are truly unique?)

Even if we generate ids based on a timestamp, say, then it's still not clear to me that there will never be a collision.

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Daniel
Daniel
  • 527
  • 1
  • 4
  • 13

Is it possible to build a system to generate UUIDs where every UUID is guaranteed unique?

Is it possible to design a system to generate unique ids where there is a requirement that every generated id is guaranteed to be unique with no possibility of collision?

I didn't think that this was possible, given the fact that there is a finite number of ids which can fit into some structure. So for instance, if we generate ids with the numbers 0-9, and store them in 32 bytes, then there are at most 10^32 possibilities for ids. This gives a very small possibility that there will be a collision, but there is still a possibility. Am I missing something, or is there a way to engineer a system such there there is guaranteed to never be a collision (i.e., all ids are truly unique?)

Even if we generate ids based on a timestamp, say, then it's still not clear to me that there will never be a collision.