CODEWITHSUNDEEP
uuidguid
ThatDataGuy
ThatDataGuy

Reputation: 2109

Is there an alternative to UUIDs / GUIDs that doesn't cause database performance issues?

As described here, using a UUID / GUID is a bad idea in a relational database context. Is there an alternative that has library support?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1486

Answers (1)

Eric
Eric

Reputation: 1472

Not a great blog post. GUIDs are great in a situation where a client needs to generate its own primary key. If it's ok that the server generate the key, use an auto-incrementing integer primary key.

Let me elaborate on why this is not a great blog post. He says:

GUIDs/UUIDs are very random. Therefore, INSERTing into an index means jumping around a lot.

a Guid is really just a 16 Byte hex number; so I could come up with a naive index where a single insert could be done in constant time by just making a 32/16 array that you could traverse through digit by digit. So, inserting N items with my naive index could be done in Log(N) time. The argument in the blog post is terrible. I'm not sure have fast a GUID insert is but the "randomness" has nothing to do with the algorithmic complexity.

Here's a good blog post with some good links:

https://blog.codinghorror.com/primary-keys-ids-versus-guids/

I particularly like this link:

http://web.archive.org/web/20150511162734/http://databases.aspfaq.com/database/what-should-i-choose-for-my-primary-key.html

Good discussion of the tradeoffs of different keys.

Upvotes: 2

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