Learn more about auto increment and GUID in MySQL. Our MySQL Support team is here to help you with your questions and concerns.

MySQL Auto increment GUID | Which one is better?

The auto-increment feature in MySQL can generate unique numeric values for a column in a table automatically.

These values are often used as primary keys to identify each row in the table. Alternatively, we can also use a GUID value.

GUID, short for Globally Unique Identifier, is a 128-bit value. Furthermore, this value is unique across all devices and systems worldwide.

According to our experts, MySQL offers a built-in function called “UUID()” that can be used to generate GUID values for a column.

We can easily use GUIDs as the primary key for a table with these steps:

• First, we have to create a new table with a column to store the GUID value.
• Then, set the default value of the column to be generated by the UUID() function:

  ALTER TABLE tablename MODIFY COLUMN columnname CHAR(36) NOT NULL DEFAULT UUID();
• Next, when we insert new rows into the table MySQL will automatically generate a unique GUID value.

According to our experts, using GUIDs as the primary key offers several advantages compared to auto-incremented numeric values. For instance, GUIDs are globally unique, so we can use them to identify rows across different databases and systems. Furthermore, GUIDs provide better security.

Unfortunately, they are comparatively longer and hence take up more space than numeric values. This may affect the performance and storage requirements of the database. Our experts would also like to point out that GUIDs tend to be more difficult to read and work with than simple numeric values.

At the end of the day, we have to decide to use either GUID or auto increment in MySQL based on our specific requirements and constraints of the database application.

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Conclusion

To sum up, our Support Techs introduced us to Auto increment and GUID options in MySQL.