What is a RID?

RID is short for Record ID. This is a hidden counter that a Catalogue maintains to give it a unique value by which to access records. Why, all the built-in fields can potentially be duplicates across records. The exception is the cataloguing date/time. Not surprisingly, the 'Cataloged' field is thus used as the default sort field though this will appear a little unintuitive to the user. You might assume the 'File name' field always has a unique value, but not so. It is not recommended practice but you can have records with the same filename as long as the path differs. The reason this is not advised is that when updating records, Portfolio will assume the first record it finds with a matching filename is the target file - not necessarily the one you intended - and updates the existing record data.

Portfolio-generated Disk Previews have names based on the source record's RID. Exposing the hidden RID values thus allows you to parse these filenames and link Previews with record data held within a Catalogue.

Question: What is a RID? [FAQ00201.htm]
Last Update:- 31 May 2006

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