HsM makes use of Universally Unique Identifiers (UUID) in multiple places. UUIDs are used to uniquely identify something with near certainty certainty that the identifier does not duplicate one that has already been, or will be, created to identify something else.
Information labeled with UUIDs by independent parties can therefore be later combined into a single database or transmitted on the same channel, with a negligible probability of duplication.
In its canonical textual representation, the 16 octets of a UUID are represented as 32 hexadecimal digits, displayed in five groups separated by hyphens, in the form 8-4-4-4-12 for a total of 36 characters (32 hexadecimal characters and 4 hyphens). For example: 123e4567-e89b-12d3-a456-426614174000 .
