How do block ID's work and what are they for?

[phil cleaver]

Hi,

Just a quickie on how the numbering of block id's works, and what their use is.  I'm asking because I'm working on a collaberation solution using Google Drive Realtime API, and I think it's going to be a lot simpler if I just remove the block ID's from the XML that I sync.  Is this going to cause a problem?  As far as I can see Blockly happily loads XML with or without ID's in it.

Finally is there a quick an easy way to export the workspace without the ID's, or shall I strip them out myself?

Cheers

Phil