Thread: guids / bytea and index use ?

guids / bytea and index use ?

From
"Paul Newman"
Date:

Hi,

We are currently using a 32byte varchar for our primary keys. We tried to reduce this down to 16 bytes but varchar didn’t seem to store this correctly. I’d like to use bytea instead so we could use 16bytes, but are indexes used properly ? Does anyone have any other suggestions on how to store guids ? We don’t have any experience in recompiling the postgres source code etc.

 

Thanks

 

Paul Newman

Re: guids / bytea and index use ?

From
Neil Conway
Date:
Paul Newman wrote:
> We are currently using a 32byte varchar for our primary keys. We tried
> to reduce this down to 16 bytes but varchar didn't seem to store this
> correctly.

In what way was it not stored "correctly"? The size limit should not
significantly affect varchar behavior, other than bounding its maximum
size of course.

> I'd like to use bytea instead so we could use 16bytes, but are
> indexes used properly ?

Sure.

> Does anyone have any other suggestions on how to store guids ?

http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/pguuid/projdisplay.php

is out there; I haven't used it personally, though.

Is there a reason you can't use an int8?

-Neil