Using system time for ObjectIDs

[clawrenc#cup,hp.com]

In <199704100657.GAA186538#out1,ibm.net>, on 04/09/97 
   at 11:12 PM, Jeff Kesselman <jeffk#tenetwork,com> said: >At 10:08
AM 4/9/97 -0400, you wrote:

>>That almost seems too easy and I can't help but think I've missed
>>something...

>Well, it seems a touch fragile in that it depnds on an external
>setting 9the clock0 to always be reasonably correct and unique....

Usually not a problem with a decent NTP daemon.

>What about daylight savings tiem in the fall, when the clock gets set
>back?

Most OS'es (I think even BE falls into this camp, and of course all
the *nixes do) allow a system time which does not alter with DST, and
then a variant offset from that base time (see the full TZ variable
expansions sometime for a laugh).

>Also what if the system clock jus rtgets fouled thorugh hardware or
>software failure?

You are screwed.  It could also be easily argued that your system is
also seriously screwed as well.  I view not having a reasonably
accurate system time as a system-panic-worthy catastrophe.

>This scheme (dates) is good for short term thing like temp ids or
>random seeds but ild be scared to use it long term.

Its been working great hear for almost a year -- and that's on a PC
with a known slippy clock (and thrice daily synch's to NIST).

-- 
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw#null,net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder#ibm,net
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