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as opposed to int or bigint?

Also what are some drawbacks? slower performance?

forme
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  • Possible duplicate (one of many) http://stackoverflow.com/questions/713430/clustered-primary-key-on-unique-identifier-id-column-in-sql-server – David Hall Jan 07 '10 at 04:19
  • Also: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/45399/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-guid-uuid-database-keys – OMG Ponies Jan 07 '10 at 04:19

1 Answers1

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The only benefit I can think of is that it may make the table more "human" readable. Potential drawbacks and things to consider are:

  • Is it truly a unique identifier?
  • Performance may be affected depending on how large you need to scale. You may need to check if SQL Server indexes' performance is impacted.

Personally, I prefer a surrogate key number that uses an auto-increment, but it really depends on your situation.

If you were referring to the SQL Server IDENTITY column, then you may want to check out the following article, which I found helpful. Understanding SQL Server Identity Columns

jmmr
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