[bruce511]

All this, but I'd steer away from sequential numbers. They suffer from security problems, data-merging problems, data-distribution and replication problems, and more.

Over a long career I've come to favor UUID, the cost (space and performance) are well worth the advantages.

[scrollaway]

UUIDv7 has all the advantages of UUID, plus sortability, plus an embedded timestamp which can replace your "created_at" thus reducing the cost aspect. It's also soon becoming an official part of the UUID spec.

In fact, if your created_at is indexed and you can get rid of it via uuid7, there is practically no difference in terms of table size. The size cost is solely on foreign keys.

[evntdrvn]

I really hope that I can find someone on the MS SQL Server team to champion implementing native UUIDV7 support, from what I've heard they are really hesitant to add more data types but a person's gotta try :)