Converting Identity column generator to hilo: what should “next_hi” be initialized to?

Question

I am converting a class that uses the Identity generator to one that uses hilo. I'm also using a single table with distinct row per entity:

EntityId (table)
 - EntityName
 - NextHigh

Old Table:

Patients (table)
 - Id (identity)

New Table:

PatientRecord (table)
 - Id 

To retain data integrity, I just use the existing Patients.Id as the new PatientRecord.Id:

insert into PatientRecord (Id) 
select Id from Patients

And create an EntityId entry:

insert into EntityId values ('PatientRecord', ??)

where ?? is the next hi value. What value should I use here? By default, initializing the column would be 1. Do I just use that, or should I use something like select MAX(Id) from PatientRecord?

Answer 1

The next_hi is like a session key used for multiplication for generating the identity (id) so you can insert whatever you want like for example 1 or 2 or 10 each user increments the next_hi and with it it generates all identitys until some max value and then again asks for another next_hi by incrementing it... with this strategy all identity's are unique ... and they can be generated locally

Is there a practical way of migrating from identity columns to hilo keys?

http://fabiomaulo.blogspot.com/2009/02/nh210-generators-behavior-explained.html