RE: unique row identifier data type exhausted . . .

Seems to me that 64 bit OIDs is enough for any rational sensible person, and if it's not enough for you, then you have way too much time to think about it.

>>> e99re41(at)DoCS(dot)UU(dot)SE 04/26/00 08:53AM >>>
On Wed, 26 Apr 2000, Tom Cook wrote:

> Is this necessarily a good solution? If you use 64-bit OIDs, some joker
> will just hook up a several-terra-byte disk array to his machine, try to
> store the location of every molecule in the universe and break it.

That's not going to work anyway. To store information about a molecule you
need at least one such molecule to hold that state, barring major
revolutions in storage technology. :-)

> Admittedly, ~2x10^20 is a very large number, but that's what they thought
> about 2000, also...

A while ago I said that in order to exhaust the oid space you need to add
1 million new records a day for more than 10 years. Then someone said, ok,
what if I have an email service with 1 million users that each get 10
emails a day. Then you're talking about 1 year. But in order to exhaust 64
bits, you can have 10^9 users (i.e., everyone), getting two million emails
a day for 1000 years. That seems pretty safe for as long as I care.

Of course to store all molecules you really need more like 384 bits.

> What I'm saying is, is there a better way of doing this?

Transfinite numbers ;)

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