So they probably just need to use longs instead of ints. But I'm curious, if you were really stuck with a 32-bit limit on data types, what's your preferred workaround? I'm thinking I'd add another field that represents a partition. Are there other "tricks"?
If you could only use 32-bit data types, you can get 64-bits from using 2 integers together like a long number. So the right integer would hit the max, start over at 0, and increment the left integer. Then, using this idea you can create a class of numbers that can have however many bits you want by using more ints.