Re: Primary keys and composite unique keys(basic question)

On Fri, Apr 2, 2021 at 8:57 AM Hemil Ruparel <hemilruparel2002(at)gmail(dot)com>
wrote:

> I used uuid4 for customer ids because i needed to interface with payment
> providers. Is that wrong? All other places except transaction ids, i have
> used serial ints
>
> On Fri 2 Apr, 2021, 8:56 AM Rob Sargent, <robjsargent(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
>> On 4/1/21 8:28 PM, Merlin Moncure wrote:
>> >
>> > This is one of the great debates in computer science and it is not
>> > settled. There are various tradeoffs around using a composite key
>> > derived from the data (aka natural key) vs generated identifiers. It's
>> > a complex topic with many facets: performance, organization,
>> > validation, and correctness are all relevant considerations. I would
>> > never use UUIDS for keys though.
>> >
>> > merlin
>> >
>> >
>> And, pray tell, for what exactly would you use universally unique
>> identifiers.
>>
>
ULID perform better than UUID with btree indexes. The first part is based
on a timestamp, so if you don't mind exposing this information, they are a
better choice. There is an implementation for postgres here:
https://github.com/geckoboard/pgulid
Maybe there are others.