Understanding the Significance of "GUID's" in Food Smart 5

"GUID" stands for "Guaranteed Unique ID".  Databases use what are normally user-hidden numbers to identify a database information record.  This ensures that queries and data manipulations select and operate on the correct pieces of information in the database.  Many proprietary databases cannot guarantee that the numbers assigned for identification purposes to a particular piece of data will be different from those assigned on another computer running the same software.

This posed a particular challenge to Food Smart, because the software allows for data to be shared between users on different computers through their Active Community feature and built-in ability to e-mail (or transfer to other users by disk), food items, recipes, menus, and personal records.  The transferred data record's ID number could potentially be the same as another record on the new computer.  As you can imagine, chaos could result as the program found two records with the same ID number - or more likely, it would work with the first record it found with the correct ID number, and that may well not have been the correct piece of data.  The same scenario could happen when a network user of Food Smart opted to store data on their laptop (as opposed to the network server) so they could work on the program away from the office.  Upon reconnection with the office server, duplicate data ID numbers could exist because the data was created on two physically separate computers.

As a result, Food Smart developed a method of generating data ID numbers that are guaranteed to be unique, even when they are generated on different computers.  This guarantees data integrity, no matter whether a data record was created on a standalone PC, a laptop disconnected from an office server (even a SQL-based server), or a Food Smart Online server.