Are you really, absolutely certain that there's no other way to solve this than to assign int IDs to every node? As I've said this is going to be a very tough sell - at least with unique names, we can generate them based on the system host name and the domain configuration. With int IDs, the space is too small for a full identifier; it's even too small for something like a cryptographic key or hash which is at least *likely* to be distinct.