1 Reply by Alistair

  • Alistair
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  • Registered: 03-01-2007
  • Posts: 11

Re: Repetition of Unique Record Identifiers

I was recently looking through the R2002 access database looking for something, when I noticed that some of the Unique record identifiers (GUIds) occur several times in different tables.  For instance, the GUId for the survey containing all my data for 1976 is WA000151000001, as is the GUId for Subcortical in the relationship_type table.  Further searching revealed that lots of unique identifiers crop up on more than one occasion, even when its not relating to the same object in the database.  Is this a problem, or is it something that occurs in all Recorder databases?  I'd appreciate it if someone could have a look for duplicated GUIds in their own databases to confirm whether I have to start my database from scratch!

Cheers,

Alistair

2 Reply by charlesroper

  • charlesroper
  • charlesroper
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  • From: Field Studies Council
  • Registered: 26-03-2006
  • Posts: 906

Re: Repetition of Unique Record Identifiers

The IDs are unique for each table, not for the database as a whole. You will find the same primary key in different tables quite often. This is perfectly normal and nothing to worry about. So they're not so much a Globally Unique IDentifiers, but more like Table-ly Unique Identifiers.

Charles Roper
Digital Development Manager | Field Studies Council
http://www.field-studies-council.org | https://twitter.com/charlesroper | https://twitter.com/fsc_digital

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3 Reply by johnvanbreda

  • johnvanbreda
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  • Registered: 27-04-2006
  • Posts: 1,237

Re: Repetition of Unique Record Identifiers

That's right, they often get called GUIDs because they are globally unique in the context of that table. If you wanted to use them as true GUIDs then you need to prefix them with the table name - that combination will only ever occur once.

Cheers

John

John van Breda
Biodiverse IT

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