A universally unique identifier (UUID) is an identifier standard used in software construction, standardized by the Open Software Foundation (OSF) as part of the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE).
The intent of UUIDs is to enable distributed systems to uniquely identify information without significant central coordination. In this context the word unique should be taken to mean "practically unique" rather than "guaranteed unique". Since the identifiers have a finite size it is possible for two differing items to share the same identifier. The identifier size and generation process need to be selected so as to make this sufficiently improbable in practice. Anyone can create a UUID and use it to identify something with reasonable confidence that the same identifier will never be unintentionally created by anyone to identify something else. Information labeled with UUIDs can therefore be later combined into a single database without needing to resolve identifier (ID) conflicts.
One widespread use of this standard is in Microsoft's globally unique identifiers (GUIDs). Other significant uses include ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem UUIDs, LUKS encrypted partitions, GNOME, KDE, and Mac OS X, all of which use implementations derived from the uuid library found in the e2fsprogs package.
UUIDs are documented as part of ISO/IEC 11578:1996 "Information technology – Open Systems Interconnection – Remote Procedure Call (RPC)" and more recently in ITU-T Rec. X.667 | ISO/IEC 9834-8:2005. The IETF has published Standards Track RFC 4122 that is technically equivalent with ITU-T Rec. X.667 | ISO/IEC 9834-8.
Read more about Universally Unique Identifier: Definition, Variants and Versions, Implementations, Random UUID Probability of Duplicates, History
Famous quotes containing the words universally and/or unique:
“Good manners, to those one does not love, are no more a breach of truth, than your humble servant, at the bottom of a challenge is; they are universally agreed upon, and understand to be things of course. They are necessary guards of the decency and peace of society.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (16941773)
“Respect is not fear and awe; it...[is]the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.”
—Erich Fromm (20th century)