Re: UUID column as pimrary key?

In response to Scott Ribe <scott_ribe(at)elevated-dev(dot)com>:

> On Jan 5, 2011, at 8:55 AM, Bill Moran wrote:
>
> > That statement demonstrates a lack of investigation and/or consideration
> > of the circumstances.
>
> No, it doesn't.
>
> > However, if there are 5000 devices generating 100 UUIDs per hour, and you'll
> > be keeping those records for 10+ years, the chances of collisions near
> > the end of that 10 year span get high enough to actually make developers
> > nervous.
>
> No, they don't. At the end of your hypothetical 10-year period, you will have used about 43,000,000,000 UUIDs, or about 1/100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000th of the UUID space (assuming random UUIDs). Leaving you with a chance of a single collision of about 1/18,000,000,000,000,000.

For crying out loud. If you're going to pick me apart with numbers, then
actually do it with some intelligence.

I could easily counter your argument by upping the numbers to 500,000
mobile devices generating 10000 UUIDs per hour over 20 years ... or raise
it even higher if you come back with that same argument ...

But the point (that you are trying to sidestep) is that the UUID namespace
is finite, so therefore you WILL hit a problem with conflicts at some point.
Just because that point is larger than most people have to concern themselves
with isn't an invalidation.

--
Bill Moran
http://www.potentialtech.com
http://people.collaborativefusion.com/~wmoran/