SQL GUID Vs Integer

Posted by Dal on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Dal
Published on 2010-05-10T17:32:58Z Indexed on 2010/05/10 17:44 UTC
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sql-server-2008

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auto-increment

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guid

Hi

I have recently started a new job and noticed that all the SQL tables use the GUID data type for the primary key.

In my previous job we used integers (Auto-Increment) for the primary key and it was a lot more easier to work with in my opinion.

For example, say you had two related tables; Product and ProductType - I could easily cross check the 'ProductTypeID' column of both tables for a particular row to quickly map the data in my head because its easy to store the number (2,4,45 etc) as opposed to (E75B92A3-3299-4407-A913-C5CA196B3CAB).

The extra frustration comes from me wanting to understand how the tables are related, sadly there is no Database diagram :(

A lot of people say that GUID's are better because you can define the unique identifer in your C# code for example using NewID() without requiring SQL SERVER to do it - this also allows you to know provisionally what the ID will be.... but I've seen that it is possible to still retrieve the 'next auto-incremented integer' too.

A DBA contractor reported that our queries could be up to 30% faster if we used the Integer type instead of GUIDS...

Why does the GUID data type exist, what advantages does it really provide?... Even if its a choice by some professional there must be some good reasons as to why its implemented?

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