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Quote: They are a lot like snowflakes:
Funny you bring that up. Recently a scientist claimed to have found many duplicates after cataloging many, many snowflakes.
Of course they aren't unique.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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Does that include artificial snowflakes?  
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To be fair though, snowflakes are only 64 bit
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Yikes! It's like encountering your doppelgänger in the street.
I may not last forever but the mess I leave behind certainly will.
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With GUID we talk about probability not certainty.
Even we have a GUID generator that really generates unique id, at the moment we run it in multiply locations we lost event the theory of uniqueness...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is (V).
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I still try discourage everyone from using GUID's if it's not truly necessary.
1. Waste of disk space, if an 32bit integer is sufficient why use a GUID?
2. Waste of processing power, more expensive to create, more expensive to compare against etc.
3. GUID is way more difficult to read for humans
Sure there are uses for it but in most cases you're perfectly fine without them.
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Nicholas Marty wrote: 3. GUID is way more difficult to read for humans
So what? IDs are meant to be meaningless; so that's a good thing. Even with integers you'll likely wind up just copying-and-pasting anyway.
Or do this:
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000002
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000003
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000004
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000005
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But...but...integers fit so much more nicely into a query string!
*duck and cover*
Seriously though, one of the few uses I've found for GUIDS is to allow the keys in your tables to be easily moved between different databases, for instance to move between a production and test DB. But otherwise integers are more efficient and easier to work with.
As for the uniqueness debate, who cares? Raise your hand if you have ever seen a duplicate GUID pop up in a real-world situation. It's like arguing about the randomness of pseudo-random number generators, it's a moot point for almost all real-world implementations.
If you're generating thousands of GUIDs per second in a system that you expect to be around for centuries, then maybe you should worry about it. Otherwise, it's like worrying about the server being taken out by a meteor hit. And even if you're unlucky enough to have a collision, you'd have to have a pretty fragile system for that to be a huge disaster; you'll probably have a dupe showing up in a join somewhere, not that hard to find and fix.
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Yup; my previous employer offered both standalone installations and a SAAS model where we hosted, and some of the primary keys were ints. When a client decided it was better to go from standalone to SAAS, merging was a giant PITA.
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They are also good for situations when you want an unpredictable value, such as a reference in a link for proving an email address.
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StatementTerminator wrote: easily moved between different databases
Yes indeed.
Reminds me of one place I worked where identities were used and the only way to view PROD data was to have a tool copy the data to a DEV database -- but the tool didn't allow the IDs to be copied  , the copied rows all had new IDs that didn't match PROD.
My argument isn't entirely against integers, but auto-increment integers over which the developer has no control. 
StatementTerminator wrote: integers are more efficient and easier to work with
My experience has been the opposite.
StatementTerminator wrote: As for the uniqueness debate, who cares?
'Xactly
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Guids are great for building object relationships client side without a need to hit a database to get the next available integer. Users should never see a Guid.
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It's a random number from a limited domain. Ask enough numbers, and you'll encounter the same number sooner or later - one doesn't need much math to explain the logic.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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That's why I always repetitively hash and bitmask things until I end up with one byte.
And it has to be a human-readable byte, too, for those pesky tech support calls. 
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That's why I don't use GUIDs. 
"If A is a success in life, then A=x+y+z. (Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.)"
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It must be unique, because it has "unique" in the name. Otherwise, it would have been a GNUID.
And anyway, I don't think the Internet would be lying at us like that.
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Do not feed the troll ! - Common proverb
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 +5
Sounds like someone just got high-speed internet last month.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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There is a finite number of possible values for a GUID. No finite number can be guaranteed unique.
It's not that difficult.
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If you're only talking about the random GUIDs, only 122 bits are actually random.
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Quote: For example, time value will roll over at less than 1400 years.
Oh My! Prepare for Year 3400 panic - all the COBOL code will have to be updated all over again.
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Of course it is possible to generate a non-unique GUIDs, but if you use a reliable implementation of a good generation algorithm, you can be reasonably confident that GUIDs will be unique within the context that matters. The only time I have seen problems was when using an unreliable implementation - NetWare 5 used to have problems with duplicate GUIDs being generated when timesync caused the clock to go backwards.
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Arguing about the uniqueness of GUIDs is pointless, given that they're integer numbers in a finite space, which means that soon or (most likely) later there's going to be a collision, however, for practical purposes we can say that they're unique.
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I've actually been burned twice in the same year by GUID collisions within unrelated software products from other companies. They are a very poor architecture choice.
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This may not be in the same spirit of fun that the article sets up, but I thought GUIDs were guaranteed unique because they are based on MAC addresses that are guaranteed as unique!? So proving MAC addresses are not unique would be a prerequisite?!
"Courtesy is the product of a mature, disciplined mind ... ridicule is lack of the same - DPM"
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