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If you've done any scripting of Service-now.com, you've almost certainly run into the notion of a sys_id: the unique 32-character long identifier that is the primary key for every record in every table of the Service-now.com database. You may even already be aware that every sys_id is an example of a GUID (Globally Unique IDentifier, pronounced either GOO-id or GWID). But do you know how a GUID is made, and what all its characters mean?
And do you know that not all sys_ids are created equally?
GUIDs are (usually) a sequence of 32 hexadecimal digits. Since each hexadecimal digit represents four bits, and 4 â‹… 32 = 128, that means that a standard GUID is actually a 128 bit number (roughly the same as a 1038, or 38 digit, decimal number). This number is generated at the moment any given record is first inserted. The 128 bits are built up from four separate 32 bit numbers, as follows:
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