Creating Sequential GUID’s… No, not via SQL Server, but the Windows API

Alkampfer's Place - Sequential GUID are Unique

“This post refers to the previous post, where liviu warns against the “non uniqueness” of T-SQL sequential guid. The technique used is based on the UuidCreateSequential API function of the operating system. This function generates unique guid unless there is no NetworkCard in the system, but this function warns you when the guid can be considered unique only on local machine, when it returns the value RPC_S_UUID_LOCAL_ONLY.

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MSDN Library - UuidCreateSequential Function

“The UuidCreateSequential function creates a new UUID.

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For security reasons, UuidCreate was modified so that it no longer uses a machine's MAC address to generate UUIDs. UuidCreateSequential was introduced to allow creation of UUIDs using the MAC address of a machine's Ethernet card.

The UuidCreateSequential function returns RPC_S_UUID_LOCAL_ONLY when the originating computer does not have an ethernet/token ring (IEEE 802.x) address. In this case, the generated UUID is a valid identifier, and is guaranteed to be unique among all UUIDs generated on the computer. However, the possibility exists that another computer without an ethernet/token ring address generated the identical UUID. Therefore you should never use this UUID to identify an object that is not strictly local to your computer. Computers with ethernet/token ring addresses generate UUIDs that are guaranteed to be globally unique.

Note The UuidCreateSequential function tends to be slightly faster than the UuidCreate function. When the performance of the generation of a UUID is a significant consideration, the UuidCreateSequential function may be used.

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PInvoke.net - UuidCreateSequential (rpcrt4)

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sigh… I’ve only been meaning to switch my local GUID generation to this since 2006. What I get for not logging it as an official work item.   :/

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Create Your Own Sequential GUIDs (like NewSequentialID() in SQL 2005)