Re: UUID data format 4x-4x-4x-4x-4x-4x-4x-4x

James Mansion wrote:
> Kenneth Marshall wrote:
>> conversion process themselves. Accepting random input puts a performance
>> hit on everybody following the standard.
> Why is that necessarily the case?
>
> Why not have a liberal parser and a configurable switch that
> determines whether non-standard
> forms are liberally accepted, accepted with a logged warning, or
> rejected?

I recall there being a measurable performance difference between the
most liberal parser, and the most optimized parser, back when I wrote
one for PostgreSQL. I don't know how good the one in use for PostgreSQL
8.3 is. As to whether the cost is noticeable to people or not - that
depends on what they are doing. The problem is that a UUID is pretty
big, and parsing it liberally means a loop.

My personal opinion is that this is entirely a philosophical issue, and
that both sides have merits. There is no reason for PostgreSQL to
support all formats, not matter how non-standard, for every single type.
So, why would UUID be special? Because it's easy to do is not
necessarily a good reason. But then, it's not a bad reason either.

Cheers,
mark

--
Mark Mielke <mark(at)mielke(dot)cc>