The “real” unique identifier is such a common problem. And the solution is almost always “model, make, and serial number.”
Plus year of production if necessary.
I’ve seen programmers attempt deduplicate humans by language spoken.
Plus year of production if necessary.
I’ve seen programmers attempt deduplicate humans by language spoken.
If you've ever spent time in old car forums, you learn that even this isn't enough because of production-line sloppiness.
Serial number re-use is rare, but it happens. Usually because a product had something detected that resulted in remanufacturing, but sometimes other things slip.
Noob me would have guessed the "source of truth" would be whatever identifier(s) is recorded by the insurance company. Or maybe the service and maintenance agreements.
Failing that, I would have guessed some kind of (natural) compound key derived from the transfer(s) of ownership (Airplane Purchase Agreement? Bill of Sale?) noting the unique major components like airframe, interior, and engines? And maybe wings?
Sounds like a fun problem. Thanks for sharing.
How is that supposed to help? If two people have the same name, it's overwhelmingly likely that they also speak the same language.
(No racist intentions here, but you bring up both points and I thought that to be interesting)
The son of John who is a smith
I'm only joking a little. Funny thing, surnames aren't actually that old for Europeans. Most of history there'd be maybe two people with the same name. They solved it back then very much the same way we solve it now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Occupational_surnames
And don't forget that there's Lee[1], Lee[2], Lee[3], Lee[4], and Lee[5]! Which are all different
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_name
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_(English_surname)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BD_(Vietnamese_surname)
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_(Korean_surname)
"Abel Davidson Carpenter of Helsinki born in the year 2020" is probably good enough an identifier.
Obviously has some issues, but it's interesting to see that this "ancient" scheme would still hold up these days.
It's a regional thing, but roughly translates to "John Smith, programmer from NY, born 1995"
Model = what is the type of the thing
Serial Number = was supposed to be what order the things were made in (e.g. the number of the serial order), but this is often obfuscated or often repeats [1].
In cars, make would be like Ford. Model would be like Focus, serial number would be VIN (vehicle identification number - in cars, those are generally unique!).
Ford Focus + VIN, basically.
There is a theoretical concept of a unique identifier for everything... including people from ISO under ISO 8000.. combining a natural location identifier (eNLI)[2] and an ISO8601 timestamp - to represent "where and when a thing is considered to be born" - a point in time and space the thing is considered to come into existence.
I think the idea is called "natural person identifier" for humans.
This ID has to be assigned but I think you can see the idea at least.
I suppose this doesn't include make/manufacturer but realistically that isn't needed for uniqueness in this scheme, only as descriptive metadata for things that have one.
[1] This is related to the fact that if serial numbers were truly serial, one could estimate the rate and quantity of production which is considered sensitive information by most manufacturers. This relates to "the German tank problem" - during WWII the allies were able to accurately estimate the production of German tanks by analyzing the serial numbers off captured tanks.
[2] https://eccma.org/enli-eccma-natural-location-identifier/
Like Mary, first daughter of Henry VIII