UK Government Data Standards Catalogue

Metadata Value
Data Element

Universally Unique Identifier - UUID

Is Part Of
Technical Identifiers
Has Parts  
Version 0.2 
Status Release 
Previous Versions
Version: 0.1 Status: Release
 
Later Versions  
Date Agreed 26 November 2004

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Name

Universally Unique Identifier - UUID

Description An algorithmically generated identifier that provides a reasonable assurance of uniqueness within the known universe.
Business Format 128-bit
Element Type Data Type
XML Schema
Validation
ffffffff-ffff-ffff-ffff-ffffffffffff where f is a hexadecimal: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,a,b,c,d,e,f. Strictly lower case letters are permitted. The string representation is 36 characters long including hyphens.
Value
DefaultValue
Owner ISO
Based On ISO/IEC 11578:1996
Verification
Comments
  • Supersedes GUID.
  • Suggested pattern for schema: "[0-9a-f]{8}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{12}"
  • For more information see the Internet-Draft UUIDs and GUIDs http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4122.txt