There are various compelling reasons to use universally unique identifiers (UUID) as primary keys. Two examples are: To be able to generate keys independently of the database To move sets of related records between different databases without having to deal with renumbering everything However, like everything good in life, UUID’s come with their own downsides. […]

© Laurenz Albe 2021 UPDATED 14.05.2022: Sometimes customers ask me about the best choice for auto-generated primary keys. In this article, I’ll explore the options and give recommendations. Why auto-generated primary keys? Every table needs a primary key. In a relational database, it is important to be able to identify an individual table row. If […]

Some weeks ago at pgDay Paris, during the evening social event, we got into a small “guestimation” with another Postgres enthusiast, about the precepted speed of using integer based ID-s vs UUID based ones for bigger amounts of data. In short he reasoned that one should generally avoid the UUID-s for performance reasons as they […]