Integers vs GUIDs - The Great Primary Key Debate

One of the first steps in creating any database table is deciding what kind of data will uniquely identify a given row in said table; we call this a primary key. In modern databases, if we want to create a unique key from "thin air" and not use already-existing data (this situation is known as using a surrogate key) we have two commonly-accepted options: using integers, or using Globally-Unique Identifiers (GUIDs). Both integers and GUIDs can be generated... Read more >