Generating Unique IDs in Windows SharePoint

In many scenarios, it is useful to have a system-generated unique identifier for all items contained within a site. For example, you may wish to create a unique identifier for all records submitted to the Records Center. Regardless of which library that the record is stored, each record contained within the site has a unique identifier. SharePoint generates an ID for each item in a list, but these ID's are repeated in each list or library and are not unique across the site. Internally SharePoint creates a unique GUID for each item, but it is not exposed to the end user, and even if it were, GUID's are not very user-friendly.

Implementation of our unique ID includes a list for maintaining the value, and an event handler for retrieving and setting the value.

private static int GetUniqueId(SPWeb web)
        {
            int returnValue = -1;
            int retryCounter = 0;
            int uniqueId = -1;