UUIs

Universal Unique Identifiers, commonly abbreviated as UUIDs, are 128-bit numbers used in computer systems to uniquely identify information. The primary purpose of a UUID is to ensure that any given identifier is unique across all possible systems and at any given time, without requiring a central coordinating authority. This means that two independently generated UUIDs are extremely unlikely to be the same.

UUIDs are often represented as a 32-character hexadecimal string, divided into five groups separated by hyphens, such as `f47ac10b-58cc-4372-a567-0e02b2c3d479`. This representation is a human-readable format but does not affect the underlying 128-bit value. There are several versions of UUIDs, each generated using different algorithms and employing varying degrees of randomness or predictability. Common versions include Version 1, which is time-based and includes MAC address information, and Version 4, which is purely randomly generated.

The widespread adoption of UUIDs stems from their ability to prevent collisions in distributed systems, databases, and network environments where generating unique identifiers locally is crucial. They are used in a wide range of applications, including software development, database primary keys, and network protocols, to avoid the complexity and overhead of centralized ID generation systems. The probability of a collision between two randomly generated UUIDs is so astronomically low that it is considered practically impossible for most applications.