At 07:09 PM 25/03/2007, you wrote:

>ive done a search on the threads and read something about storing as
>binary octets. there was a bit of a debate.
>
>is there any resource i can go to which will give me a definitive
>answer to how to tackle this common scenario in firebird? thanks

It's not all that common a scenario in Firebird, not sufficiently
common to warrant a manual on the subject, at least! :-) Most
common way to do keys for replictation is to use two sequence keys
(a.k.a. generators) or to use one sequence and allocate ranges to
different sites. GUIDs are not guaranteed to be unique; sequences
are. There's no reason to suppose there would be a perceptible
difference in performance either way.

But, if you're forced to use a GUID, use a CHAR type and character
set OCTETS for the column. That way you don't get stuck with blank
bytes trailing.......OCTETS stores trailing bytes as ascii null (dec code 0).

./heLen