原文地址：http://blog.csdn.net/nidehong/archive/2006/11/22/1406125.aspx
UUID
通用惟一標(biāo)識(shí)符（UUID）是128位比特的數(shù)字，用來惟一地標(biāo)識(shí)因特網(wǎng)上的某些對(duì)象或者實(shí)體。
A Universally Unique Identifier is an identifier standard used in software construction, standardized by the Open Software Foundation (OSF) as part of the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE). The intent of UUIDs is to enable distributed systems to uniquely identify information without significant central coordination. Thus, anyone can create a UUID and use it to identify something with reasonable confidence that the identifier will never be unintentionally used by anyone for anything else. Information labelled with UUIDs can therefore be later combined into a single database without need to resolve name conflicts. The most widespread use of this standard is in Microsoft's Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs) which implement this standard.
一個(gè)UUID 是一個(gè)標(biāo)識(shí)符標(biāo)準(zhǔn)用于軟件架構(gòu)，是由開放軟件基金會(huì)（OSF）作為分布式計(jì)算環(huán)境（DCE）的一部分而制定的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。UUIDs的目的就是使分布式系統(tǒng)可以不需要重要的中央調(diào)合系統(tǒng)而能唯一地標(biāo)識(shí)信息。這樣，任何人能創(chuàng)造一個(gè)UUID 和使用它來標(biāo)識(shí)一些東西，而且，你有足夠的信心來確定這個(gè)標(biāo)識(shí)是永遠(yuǎn)不會(huì)被任何人無意地使用在任何東西上。因此，信息加上了UUID標(biāo)簽就能合并到單個(gè)數(shù)據(jù)庫(kù)中而不用去解決命名沖突的問題。這個(gè)標(biāo)準(zhǔn)的廣泛應(yīng)用在微軟的全球唯一標(biāo)識(shí)符（GUIDs）上，GUID實(shí)現(xiàn)了這個(gè)標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。
A UUID is essentially a 16-byte number and in its canonical form a UUID may look like this:
:550E8400-E29B-11D4-A716-446655440000
And has this structure in the C programming language:
typedef struct {
unsigned32 time_low;
unsigned16 time_mid;
unsigned16 time_hi_and_version;
unsigned8 clock_seq_hi_and_reserved;
unsigned8 clock_seq_low;
byte node6;
} uuid_t;
The J2SE 5.0 release of Java provides a class that will produce 128-bit UUIDs. The API documentation for the class refers to ISO/IEC 11578:1996.
關(guān)于UUID的定義，詳細(xì)內(nèi)容可參考http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4122.txt，文檔里面還有C語言對(duì)UUID標(biāo)準(zhǔn)的各種實(shí)現(xiàn)。
GUID
A Globally Unique Identifier or GUID is a pseudo-random number used in software applications. While each generated GUID is not guaranteed to be unique, the total number of unique keys (2128 or 3.4028×1038) is so large that the possibility of the same number being generated twice is very small.
一個(gè)全球唯一標(biāo)識(shí)符 或 GUID 是一個(gè)假隨機(jī)數(shù)用于軟件中。雖然每個(gè)產(chǎn)生的GUID是不保證唯一的，但不同的標(biāo)識(shí)符總數(shù)是（2128 也就是3.4028×1038）如此之大，以至于相同的數(shù)字被產(chǎn)生兩次的機(jī)率是很相當(dāng)小的。
The GUID is an implementation by Microsoft of a standard called Universally Unique Identifier (UUID), specified by the Open Software Foundation (OSF).
GUID 是微軟對(duì)UUID這個(gè)標(biāo)準(zhǔn)的實(shí)現(xiàn)。UUID是由開放軟件基金會(huì)（OSF）定義的。
UUID還有其它各種實(shí)現(xiàn)，不止GUID一種，其它的在此不詳細(xì)說明。