A system for managing identifiers in a database replication network includes a
database including data items, and a global ID space including a number of identities
(IDs) for identifying data items. A replica of the database includes an existing
range of IDs allocated to the replica from the global ID space, and a replica ID
manager for requesting a new range of IDs from the ID space when a threshold is
reached. The replica ID manager adjusts the threshold based upon usage of IDs by
the replica, calculates a size of the new range of IDs based upon an ID usage rate
of the replica, and includes the size in the request. An ID administrator associated
with the global ID space allocates a new range of IDs to the replica in response
to the request, thereby providing unique global IDs to data items in replicas of
the database.
