Should I Use UUIDs as Primary Keys in MySQL for a 50 Million Record Database?

Performance Considerations for UUIDs in MySQL

When evaluating the use of UUIDs as primary keys for MySQL databases, performance becomes a primary concern. This discussion centers around the performance of different UUID types under high insert rates.

The proposed use case involves a database that will grow to approximately 50 million records. The concern is that non-sequential UUIDs will hinder index and primary key performance. To mitigate this, it is suggested to explore type-1 UUIDs with timestamped leftmost bits.

However, experience has shown that using UUIDs as primary keys can lead to performance degradation, particularly in SQL Server. This is because the random nature of UUIDs causes data fragmentation, resulting in performance bottlenecks as the database grows.

Therefore, it is recommended to consider an alternative approach:

• Use a sequential primary key (e.g., auto_increment) for efficient indexing and retrieval.
• Generate and store UUIDs as an additional column for purposes of distributed merging and conflict resolution.

This model provides the performance benefits of sequential keys while retaining the distribution advantages of UUIDs. Additionally, Microsoft's NEWSEQUENTIALID function offers an improved solution for sequential UUID generation, providing increased performance in SQL Server environments.

The above is the detailed content of Should I Use UUIDs as Primary Keys in MySQL for a 50 Million Record Database?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!