The following code can be found in the NHibernate.Id.GuidCombGenerator class. The algorithm creates sequential (comb) guids based on combining a "random" guid with a DateTime. I have a couple of questions related to the lines that I have marked with *1) and *2) below:
private Guid GenerateComb()
{
byte[] guidArray = Guid.NewGuid().ToByteArray();
// *1)
DateTime baseDate = new DateTime(1900, 1, 1);
DateTime now = DateTime.Now;
// Get the days and milliseconds which will be used to build the byte string
TimeSpan days = new TimeSpan(now.Ticks - baseDate.Ticks);
TimeSpan msecs = now.TimeOfDay;
// *2)
// Convert to a byte array
// Note that SQL Server is accurate to 1/300th of a millisecond so we divide by 3.333333
byte[] daysArray = BitConverter.GetBytes(days.Days);
byte[] msecsArray = BitConverter.GetBytes((long) (msecs.TotalMilliseconds / 3.333333));
// Reverse the bytes to match SQL Servers ordering
Array.Reverse(daysArray);
Array.Reverse(msecsArray);
// Copy the bytes into the guid
Array.Copy(daysArray, daysArray.Length - 2, guidArray, guidArray.Length - 6, 2);
Array.Copy(msecsArray, msecsArray.Length - 4, guidArray, guidArray.Length - 4, 4);
return new Guid(guidArray);
}
First of all, for *1), wouldn't it be better to have a more recent date as the baseDate, e.g. 2000-01-01, so as to make room for more values in the future?
Regarding *2), why would we care about the accuracy for DateTimes in SQL Server, when we only are interested in the bytes of the datetime anyway, and never intend to store the value in an SQL Server datetime field? Wouldn't it be better to use all the accuracy available from DateTime.Now?
