Re: GUID for postgreSQL

On Wed, Jul 27, 2005 at 16:57:21 -0400,
  John DeSoi <desoi@pgedit.com> wrote:
>
> On Jul 27, 2005, at 4:46 PM, Scott Marlowe wrote:
>
> >So, how can two databases, not currently talking to one another,
> >guarantee that their GUIDs don't collide? using a large randomly
> >generated name space only reduces the chances of collision, it doesn't
> >actually guarantee it.
>
>
> Like MD5, there is no 100% guarantee, but the collision possibility
> supposed to be is very close to zero.

If you use a large enough space for the number you can reduce that
probability of an accidental collision to much less than that of
catastrophic hardware failure at which point it isn't noticably better
than having no chance of collisions.