UniquIDCode

UniquIDCode is a hypothetical standardized scheme for generating globally unique identifiers intended to identify entities across distributed systems. Designed to avoid collisions and enable reliable merging, tracing, and interoperability, it aims to provide a single identifier format usable across organizations, platforms, and data stores.

A UniquIDCode typically encodes multiple components: a version or namespace, a timestamp with high precision, a node or organization identifier, and a random or hashed payload. The result is a compact alphanumeric string. Proposals allow several encodings such as hexadecimal, base32, or base64, with fixed or variable length depending on the version. Some designs include a checksum to detect errors.

Generation and properties: Codes are generated using time-based or cryptographic techniques to minimize collision risk. Methods combine deterministic aspects (like time and namespace) with nondeterministic components (such as random numbers). Some variants aim for monotonic increasing order to simplify archival and indexing.

Adoption and interoperability: As a proposed standard, practical adoption requires governance, registries, and mappings to existing identifiers (for example UUIDs or ULIDs). Systems may implement translation layers to maintain interoperability with legacy IDs while issuing UniquIDCodes for new data.

Criticisms and limitations: Potential drawbacks include longer length than traditional IDs, privacy concerns if components reveal internal topology, and the administrative overhead of namespace management to prevent collisions without a central registry.

See also: UUID, GUID, ULID, KSUID, DUID.