[erlang-questions] Use of uuidgen with a mnesia application

[Frank Mueller]

Hi Alexander,

in http://code.google.com/p/tideland-cel/source/browse/trunk/src/celutl.erl 
  you'll find my process and functions for the generation of guids.

Regards

mue

Am 06.06.2008 um 16:43 schrieb Alexander Lamb:

> Hello,
>
> I need to generate ids to be used as mnesia keys which will be unique
> not only withing a cluster of Erlang nodes but also globally (e.g. may
> be read from a Java program).
>
> I initially thought of writing my own uuidgen function, but it seems
> like reading the mac address of network interfaces can be rather
> cumbersom depending on systems.
>
> So I decided to use uuidgen from the system and convert it to binary
> (for efficiency).
>
> Is this the correct way of doing things:
>
> verify_guuid(Value) ->
> 	A = lists:nth(9,Value),
> 	B = lists:nth(14,Value),
> 	C = lists:nth(19,Value),
> 	case [A,B,C] of
> 		"---" -> true;
> 		_	  -> false
> 	end.
> 	
> make_guuid() ->
> 	First = os:cmd("uuidgen -t"),
> 	case verify_guuid(First) of
> 		true	-> Result = First;
> 		false	-> Second = os:cmd("uuidgen"),
> 				   case verify_guuid(Second) of
> 						true  -> Result = Second;
> 						false -> Result = "error",
> 								 throw({uuidgen_error,Second})
> 				   end
> 	end,
> 	erlang:list_to_binary(Result).
>
> Now, the reason I have this cascade of case is because on Linux (our
> Ubuntu servers) it recognizes the -t option to generate the uuid and
> on MacOSX (our dev machines) it does not.
> Call me crazy, but I never feel confortable about using a totally
> random uuid to identity medical records that might be copied from
> system to system, exported, etc... even if the probability of
> collision is lower than that of a large asteroid hitting earth!
>
> What is your strategy for this (maybe this is a question to ask the
> couchdb developers, since they use guuids to identify the documents)?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Alex
> --
> Alexander Lamb
> Founding Associate
> RODANOTECH Sàrl
>
> 4 ch. de la Tour de Champel
> 1206 Geneva
> Switzerland
>
> Tel:  022 347 77 37
> Fax: 022 347 77 38
>
> http://www.rodanotech.ch
>
>
>
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--
**
** Frank Mueller / Oldenburg / Germany
**
** http://frank.mweb.de and http://mue.tideland.biz
**