User ID Length - user_name and attachment sys_created_by

[stevenicklin]

All,

I've come across a problem with a user not being able to upload a file to a form. After much looking around, I found out that because the user's user ID is longer than 40 characters, it couldn't save the attachment to the attachments table.

I see:

Sys_user.user_name field max chars 100

Sys_attachment. sys_updated_by max chars 40. Sys_created_by also

Sys_attachment2 is also 40 characters.

It is saving the user's user_name field in plain text rather than using a reference to a sys_id.

Now I know that we can extend the 40 character limit to 100 and the problem will go away, which is the easy answer but could have some knock-on effect with performance temporarily.

I am looking to hear from other people who may have come across this and I would like to ask what you did in your organisation?

I can see several options (some more worthy than others in different ways)

a)         Increase the limit to 100 chars on the two attachments tables.

b)         Truncate the user's ID to 40 characters before saving.

c)         Not permitting user ID's of such length.

d)         Using sys_id's instead of user names.

e)         Something else??

How did you handle this issue if you've seen it?

Kind regards,

Steve

[stevenicklin]

Actually, I've just logged into my Dev system to test increasing the limit on sys_updated_by and sys_created_by on the Attachments table and it isn't possible to extend these out to 100 characters.

Has anyone got around this somehow?

[BenPhillipsSNC]

Hi Steve

I would recommend opening an incident with Support for this.

[stevenicklin]

Hi Ben,

Thanks for the suggestion. I separately did do this after logging this question.

It's one of those issues that I couldn't believe that we were the only company to have come across this and with such a multitude of ways of fixing this, there must be knock-on effects of any of the choices.

I'll see what HI say.

Ta!

Steve

[BenPhillipsSNC]

You might not be the only ones. Did you search our Knowledge Base for Known Errors related to this?

And yeah, I would wait to confirm if it is a problem. If it's a problem, don't build a workaround which could possibly create other problems.