Automatically generate next available user ID?

[Katie]

Hello folks-

I'm going to be trying to perform a task that I'm not sure if it's possible,
so i'm not looking for someone to write it for me, I just wanted to know if
something similar had already been written that I could get some perspective
from. Thank you in advance if you can point me to this!

I have a list of existing users (20,000+) in our application - and when new
users come in, we have to see if they already exist in the system by matching
name and 'group' - and if they do, we would assign them their existing id, if
we don't, we would assign them a new id.

The ids are generated simply by using first initial and last name, (I.E.
JSmith for John Smith) and if there is already a "jsmith" then we would
append with a 1 to make it "jsmith1" and so on. (jsmith2, jsmith3, etc.)

Does anyone know of any existing code written to perform this task that I
could user for inspiration?

Thank you!

 

[Don Guillett]

and what do you do with jim smith and joe smith and jill smith?

 

[Katie]

I'm not sure I understand your question - if you're asking what we do if we
get another duplicate, we just +1 to the number.

If you're asking where the ids go after we get the id, we have to give these
ids to other groups prior to creating the names. This is a manual process now
that takes a lot of time - but we figure there has to be a way it could be
automated.

 

[David Sisson]

I have a list of existing users (20,000+) in our application - and when new

What application? Excel? If so, how do you have the sheet setup?

ID, Last Name, First Name, etc?

You could add the new mnemonic and apply the Data->Filter->Autofilter to
find a duplicate.

 

[Katie]

I use an excel extract from the actual application that is set up with the
column headers -
Group Id # / First Name / Last Name / User ID

I'm not sure how to use the auto-filter in an automated process for more
then 1,000 rows... What I'm looking to do is 'feed' in 400 names, have those
compared to the existing list automatically and have it spit out the new
names.. this is what I do manually now.

 

[David Sisson]

I still think that a manual auto filter will serve you well.

If your application will allow you to d/l the entire databse into Excel
(either through the clipboard, or CSV), you can filter on the USERID column
that STARTS WITH new user's ID. Any matches, including incremental userids
will be displayed.

I use the filter regularly on a list of about 5300 items and the filter
handles it with no trouble.