Guid Primary /Foreign Key dilemma SQL Server

Posted by Xience on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Xience
Published on 2010-06-08T09:12:37Z Indexed on 2010/06/08 9:22 UTC
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guid

Hi guys,

I am faced with the dilemma of changing my primary keys from int identities to Guid. I'll put my problem straight up. It's a typical Retail management app, with POS and back office functionality. Has about 100 tables. The database synchronizes with other databases and receives/ sends new data.

Most tables don't have frequent inserts, updates or select statements executing on them. However, some do have frequent inserts and selects on them, eg. products and orders tables.

Some tables have upto 4 foreign keys in them. If i changed my primary keys from 'int' to 'Guid', would there be a performance issue when inserting or querying data from tables that have many foreign keys. I know people have said that indexes will be fragmented and 16 bytes is an issue.

Space wouldn't be an issue in my case and apparently index fragmentation can also be taken care of using 'NEWSEQUENTIALID()' function. Can someone tell me, from there experience, if Guid will be problematic in tables with many foreign keys.

I'll be much appreciative of your thoughts on it...

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