Re: uuid type for postgres

On Sep 6, 2005, at 12:57 PM, Jonah H. Harris wrote:

> On 9/6/05, Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com> wrote:
> Mark,
>
> > I suggest that UUID be recommended in place of SERIAL for certain
> > classes of applications, and that it therefore belongs in the core.
> > UUID and SERIAL can be used together (although, once you have a
> UUID,
> > it may not be useful to also have a SERIAL).
>
> I think that, if you want to push a refactored UUID type for
> PostgreSQL
> 8.2, that you'd better separate your database design arguments from
> your
> inclusion arguments.
>
> For example, you might get my agreement that it would be useful to
> have a
> UUID as a core type; you would *never* get my agreement to
> recommend using
> UUID to newbies. I have seen *far* too many abuses of UUIDs in
> really
> bad database design. People who use them should be experienced
> enough to
> know what they're doing.
>
> I agree with Josh on the UUID type, it gets abused far too often
> and (IMHO) isn't widely enough used to belong in the core.
> Couldn't you just fix the problem in pguuid rather than write a
> whole new type?
>

This sounds like a strawman argument. People abuse a lot of types to
do a lot of things they shouldn't be doing, adding types to the core
isn't really going to change that much one way or the other.

If the documentation gives the user a good idea of when to use UUID
and when not, I think it would be a good addition. Worst case, it
could become part of contrib, so at least it ships with PostgreSQL
with the same license. The GPL license of pguuid is a show-stopper
for some (and seems like a silly choice for what it is and who it's
for).

-bob