Hi,

I'm using Hibernate 2.1 in my Tomcat/Struts webapp. The user can
create a record in the database. I use the uuid.hex generator (in anticipation of wanting to make it cluster-safe). Someone wants me
to populate the database with the contents of a spreadsheet. That's not using my app, so the primary key isn't going to be generated as uuid.hex.

Is that a problem? I mean, the primary key doesn't need to be uuid.hex when the app is running and reading the database, right? Just when using the app to create a new record.

Thanks for your wisdom,
==Leonard

This is not a problem. You could however easily access the uuid.hex algorithm from your javacode to populate the DB to produce "similar" identifiers. This is not absolutely necessary, you should however always make sure you don't use ids to prepopulate the DB that will later on be generated by uuid.hex

Thank you for your rapid response.

I was planning to put together a simple SQL script that would insert
the data into the table. I wouldn't be using Java for this part of it.

Since the uuid.hex IDs are 32 characters long, couldn't I create just
about anything that doesn't have 32 characters and be safe from a collision with IDs generated by Hibernate?

Sorry to ask what may be painfully simple questions. :-)

Shorter IDs should be safe.