This can create problems even internally if we use the same ID system for multiple tables, but it really gets messy when we start working with any kind of outside data. However, it has some major downsides:įirst, it can easily create confusion when we’re doing things like joining tables or importing new data, because the id values above aren’t unique. We could set up sequential IDs such that the first order to come in is 1, the second is 2, and so on, like so: idĪnd this approach might work well, at least for a while, if our scale is small. As orders come in, we want to assign them an id number and store them in our orders table using that number. To answer this question, let’s imagine we’re operating an ecommerce bookshop. (Technically, it’s not impossible that the same UUID we generate could be used somewhere else, but with 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 different possible UUIDs out there, the chances are very slim). UUIDs are widely used in part because they are highly likely to be unique globally, meaning that not only is our row’s UUID unique in our database table, it’s probably the only row with that UUID in any system anywhere. What is a UUID?Ī UUID – that’s short for Universally Unique IDentifier, by the way – is a 36-character alphanumeric string that can be used to identify information (such as a table row). Instead, it’s a good idea to assign each row some kind of unique identifier. We wouldn’t want to use fields such as name or address as unique identifiers because it’s possible more than one customer could have the same name, or share the same address.

When working with a database, it’s common practice to use some kind of id field to provide a unique identifier for each row in a table.

Boost uuid generator example