CODEWITHSUNDEEP
mongodbnosqluuid
Prem
Prem

Reputation: 5997

MongoDB - Advantage of using 12 bytes string as unique identifier instead of incremental value

Is there any specific reason for MongoDB generating uuid as unique identifier instead of incremental values as unique identifier?.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 345

Answers (1)

Stennie
Stennie

Reputation: 65353

Incrementing values or sequences require a central point of reference which is a limiting factor for scaling. ObjectIDs are designed to be reasonably unique IDs that can be independently generated in a distributed environment with monotonically increasing values (a leading timestamp component) for approximate ordering.

ObjectIDs are typically generated by MongoDB drivers so there is no need to make a server round-trip to find the next available _id or wait for the server result of an insert operation to know what _id was allocated. If a driver or client application inserts a document without including an _id value, an ObjectID will be generated by the mongod server.

There is no strict requirement to use ObjectIDs in MongoDB: you can provide your own _id values if there is a more natural unique key for your data or you prefer an alternative primary key format.

Upvotes: 3

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