[wp-hackers] Time to change GUID to UUID?

[Lynne Pope]

On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 5:14 AM, Andrew Nacin <wp at andrewnacin.com> wrote:

> On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 12:19 AM, Lynne Pope <lynne.pope at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Does anyone know why this isn't being changed? Are there only a very few
> of
> > us that see non-unique GUID's?
>
>
> It's definitely been considered, especially since we've now bumped our
> required versions. MySQL UUIDs, though, have issues when it comes to
> replication. Ultimately, a post's GUID can't be considered globally unique.
> Just unique across the site/network. Given that GUIDs are only used for
> feeds, this is acceptable. If a plugin may wish to leverage their
> "GUID-ness" for something else, then your mileage may vary.
>
> Nacin
>

The problem is, as things stand, they are not unique across even a site.
It's not difficult to get duplicate GUID's within a site. However, also
consider this (it's a real world scenario).
Person A has a WordPress blog on example.com. The blog is moved to
example2.com and example.com is abandoned.
Person B gets their new domain, example.com. B has no clue that the domain
has ever had WordPress installed. B starts a blog on example.com.

Person A has had GUID's of http://example.com/?p=123
Person B has GUID's of http://example.com/?p=123

These are not unique GUID's, even to that domain. They represent different
content with different owners.

Currently, the only way to avoid this happening is for someone to physically
delete all content from a domain and keep their site around long enough for
the feed readers to remove the content from their cache.

I don't mean to come across as though I am beating a dead horse however Otto
is right about the replication issue and, ultimately, I can see great
benefits (and reduction of confusion for users) in moving to real UUID's.
I hope that this will be reconsidered.

Lynne