[Opensim-dev] standardizing on uuid string formats

[Sean Heavy]

+1 to XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX
Human readable data in the database is very helpful when trying to track 
down issues. I'd prefer not having to write special programs to convert 
it to human readable just to compare database records here and there.
~Sean Heavy

Sean Dague wrote:
> 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
>