Human-Friendly IDs

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Before we do anything too difficult, I want to understand what the hang-up is.  

Small IDs are HIGHLY preferable, because they are communicated over the phone 
all the time.  "I'm at work order A65" is a lot easier/clearer to say than 
"I've just completed Work Order A-three-thousand-eight-hundred-ninety-seven."  
I wouldn't care if only computers needed to communicate the ID, but humans must 
also communicate the ID.  Putting the letter in front also helps identify the 
ID as a work order number

What if we take this approach: Let the Auto-increment continue to infinity.  
Create a second column called "Human-Friendly ID." This number resets for each 
new incident.  For Sandy, the Human-Friendly IDs will start at A1. For the next 
disaster/incident, they will start at B1, etc.

This approach should allow us to also import the existing IDs and maintain 
continuity.  Does this sound reasonable?  Obviously we'll have to develop a 
plan to manage Disaster 27 (e.g., what happens after "Z"?), but I think it 
should be a lightweight solution.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by v...@aarontitus.net on 7 Nov 2012 at 1:21

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Original comment by v...@aarontitus.net on 7 Nov 2012 at 1:46

• Added labels: Priority-High

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Original comment by rostovp...@gmail.com on 7 Nov 2012 at 4:18

• Added labels: Priority-Critical
• Removed labels: Priority-High

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You must now use --high_replication to use dev_appserver. Also, you must run 
/initialize whenever the datastore is empty.

Original comment by rostovp...@gmail.com on 7 Nov 2012 at 8:28

• Changed state: Fixed