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by welder 869 days ago
Auto-incrementing integers mean you're always dependent on a central server. UUIDs break that dependency, so you can scale writes up to multiple databases in parallel.

If you're using MySQL maybe integer ids make sense, because it scales differently than PostgreSQL.
2 comments
sgarland 869 days ago
If the DB fails to assign an ID, it's probably broken, so having an external ID won't help you.

If you're referring to not having conflicts between distributed nodes, that's a solved problem as well – distribute chunked ranges to each node of N size.

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kiitos 869 days ago
Whatever is distributing the chunks is still a point of central coordination.
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Dylan16807 869 days ago
Yes, and?

If you can't manage minor levels of coordination because your database is on fire, the problem is that your database is on fire.

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kiitos 863 days ago
Fewer points of coordination is always better.

In general you shouldn't need to make a roundtrip to produce an ID.

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Dylan16807 862 days ago
> Fewer points of coordination is always better.

The distributed database needs a coordination system anyway, so it's not an additional point.

> In general you shouldn't need to make a roundtrip to produce an ID.

Did you forget the context over the last week? We're already talking about reserving big chunks to remove the need to make a roundtrip to produce an ID. There would instead be something like one roundtrip per million IDs.

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kiitos 857 days ago
> The distributed database needs a coordination system anyway, so it's not an additional point.

Nope! Distributed databases do not necessarily need a "coordination system" in this sense. Most wide-scale distributed databases actually cannot rely on this kind of coordination.

> Did you forget the context over the last week? We're already talking about reserving big chunks to remove the need to make a roundtrip to produce an ID. There would instead be something like one roundtrip per million IDs.

OK, it's very clear that you're speaking from a context which is a very narrow subset of distributed systems as a whole. That's fine, just please understand your experience isn't broadly representative.

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akvadrako 869 days ago
The way to solve that is giving each server it's own range of IDs.
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