[Opensim-dev] standardizing on uuid string formats

[Sean Dague]

We have 3 serialization formats for a UUID
 * XXXXXXYYYYYYZZZZZZ....
 * XXXXXX-YYYYYY-ZZZZZZ....
 * binary packed version (used in the mysql assets table exclusively)

This is definitely confusing.  One of the reasons that we got here is
that there never was really a defined standard, and things grew and
changed over time.  One of the reasons that we are still here is that
until recently, doing database migrations between formats would have
been a lot of crazy logic.  I'm hoping that the Migration support I just
put in (and switched both SQLite and MySQL over to) should fix part 2.

So, back to part 1.  I think we should declare a standard, and work
towards getting everything in that standard.  My suggestion, and
preference here is form 2: XXXXXX-YYYYYY-ZZZZZZ... for the following
reasons.
 * It's very user readable, and like the format that people have come to
   expect in the client viewer.  As people like looking at their data in
   both xml and in the database, making it make more sense to them is
   probably a good thing
 * It's the native string format for LLUUID and GUID (system built in).
   Using another format means lots of converting back and forth.  
 * It also occured to me this morning that the extra string in every 
   conversion might account for some of our extra overhead.

All opinions on the table are valid.  I firmly believe that anything
that gets our data more self consistant will help with maintainability
in the project.  Please throw in your views, and I'll queue this up for
future work.

    -Sean

-- 
__________________________________________________________________

Sean Dague                                       Mid-Hudson Valley
sean at dague dot net                            Linux Users Group
http://dague.net                                 http://mhvlug.org

There is no silver bullet.  Plus, werewolves make better neighbors
than zombies, and they tend to keep the vampire population down.
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