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Avoid UUID Version 4 Primary Keys in Postgres

andyatkinson.com

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Re: Avoid UUID Version 4 Primary Keys in Postgres

#441

Post by EnergyAmy »

defrost wrote: post #440
EnergyAmy wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gamete-based definition of sex is merely a description of reality. I continue to look forward to your citation disputing the truth of what he lays out in that paper, or the other links I provided that affirm the same stance. Ad hominems are boring, don't you have anything? You unfortunately don't really understand the point here, but to reiterate, just because someone is born with nonfunctional/missing gonads doe…

> The gamete-based definition of sex is merely a description of reality. An incomplete one that fails to cover all cases. You unfortunately don't really understand the point here

I look forward to your citations supporting any of your points.

Re: Avoid UUID Version 4 Primary Keys in Postgres

#442

Post by defrost »

EnergyAmy wrote: post #441
defrost wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The gamete-based definition of sex is merely a description of reality. An incomplete one that fails to cover all cases. You unfortunately don't really understand the point here

I look forward to your citations supporting any of your points.

You must be living under a rock if you've missed out the past 140 years of debate on this subject.

There has been multiple definitions put forward, they all fall at a few (very few out of nine billion) edge cases.

I look forward to your explaination of why you feel that every human on on the planet must be assigned as either [M] or [F] at birth with no recognition of the real circumstances in the actual edge cases.

Not even the class of South African hermaphrodites cleanly all fall one way or the other.. there's furious individual by individual debate over which of the two potential gamate producing mechanisms is less mangled than the other - as you should be aware given your apparent singular obsession here.

I'm curious as to why so recently so much money has been spent on pushing Colin Wright as the new prophet of an old idea that doesn't provide a complete classification.

Re: Avoid UUID Version 4 Primary Keys in Postgres

#443

Post by EnergyAmy »

defrost wrote: post #442
EnergyAmy wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I look forward to your citations supporting any of your points.

You must be living under a rock if you've missed out the past 140 years of debate on this subject. There has been multiple definitions put forward, they all fall at a few (very few out of nine billion) edge cases. I look forward to your explaination of why you feel that every human on on the planet must be assigned as either [M] or [F] at birth with no recognition of the real circumstances in the actual edge cases. N…

You're still not providing any citations, why is that? Surely you can ask some of the people in field work that you run with.

I'm also not sure why you're so focused on Colin Wright when I provided other examples of people affirming the same stance, as previously stated. Take your pick, or provide citations of your own.

Do you have a particular example in mind for the South African hermaphrodites?

Re: Avoid UUID Version 4 Primary Keys in Postgres

#444

Post by defrost »

EnergyAmy wrote: post #443
defrost wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be living under a rock if you've missed out the past 140 years of debate on this subject. There has been multiple definitions put forward, they all fall at a few (very few out of nine billion) edge cases. I look forward to your explaination of why you feel that every human on on the planet must be assigned as either [M] or [F] at birth with no recognition of the real circumstances in the actual edge cases. N…

You're still not providing any citations, why is that? Surely you can ask some of the people in field work that you run with. I'm also not sure why you're so focused on Colin Wright when I provided other examples of people affirming the same stance, as previously stated. Take your pick, or provide citations of your own. Do you have a particular example in mind for the South African hermaphrodites?

And you're still not addressing anything that I have asked of you

Re: Avoid UUID Version 4 Primary Keys in Postgres

#446

Post by EnergyAmy »

defrost wrote: post #444
EnergyAmy wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still not providing any citations, why is that? Surely you can ask some of the people in field work that you run with. I'm also not sure why you're so focused on Colin Wright when I provided other examples of people affirming the same stance, as previously stated. Take your pick, or provide citations of your own. Do you have a particular example in mind for the South African hermaphrodites?

And you're still not addressing anything that I have asked of you

I'm literally asking you to get specific so we can talk about particulars, so I'm not sure where you're getting that from.

I don't really get the point of this dance you're doing. Why not just admit that you don't have anything to back your comments up?

Re: Avoid UUID Version 4 Primary Keys in Postgres

#447

Post by defrost »

EnergyAmy wrote: post #446
defrost wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you're still not addressing anything that I have asked of you

I'm literally asking you to get specific so we can talk about particulars, so I'm not sure where you're getting that from. I don't really get the point of this dance you're doing. Why not just admit that you don't have anything to back your comments up?

Specifically, then, why does it suddenly recently matter that every human birth be classed as exlusively [M] or [F].

I'm old, I've been about biology for a long time, it's never been that way.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_ice is a cracking read. Good science.

We observe one predominent form of solid water most often in our environment - but other forms exist and frequency varies elsewhere.

There are literal tomes on disorders of sex development, it's a subject with decades of solid research history and centuris of literary reference.

"Strongly bimodal with some outliers" has been an ideal summary for a complex domain until ... recently.

What motivates you to shoehorn every birth into one of two boxes despite the theorectical and practical issues?

Re: Avoid UUID Version 4 Primary Keys in Postgres

#448

Post by EnergyAmy »

defrost wrote: post #447
EnergyAmy wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm literally asking you to get specific so we can talk about particulars, so I'm not sure where you're getting that from. I don't really get the point of this dance you're doing. Why not just admit that you don't have anything to back your comments up?

Specifically, then, why does it suddenly recently matter that every human birth be classed as exlusively [M] or [F]. I'm old, I've been about biology for a long time, it's never been that way. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_ice is a cracking read. Good science. We observe one predominent form of solid water most often in our environment - but other forms exist and frequency varies elsewhere. There are lite…

You're still not providing any citations, why is that?

It's not about what motivates me, it's about the scientific consensus in the field of biology. The same consensus that has remain unchanged for well over a century. I've provided citations affirming this consensus, and you've refused to back up your comments. Why not just admit that you're wrong?

EDIT: Rate limited by HN, so I guess we are done here. I'm not sure why you think prompting you to get specific about the group means being unaware of it. I'm rather disappointed in your bluster, it makes me wonder in retrospect if I've been baited into arguing with a bot.

Re: Avoid UUID Version 4 Primary Keys in Postgres

#449

Post by defrost »

EnergyAmy wrote: post #448
defrost wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically, then, why does it suddenly recently matter that every human birth be classed as exlusively [M] or [F]. I'm old, I've been about biology for a long time, it's never been that way. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_ice is a cracking read. Good science. We observe one predominent form of solid water most often in our environment - but other forms exist and frequency varies elsewhere. There are lite…

You're still not providing any citations, why is that? It's not about what motivates me, it's about the scientific consensus in the field of biology. The same consensus that has remain unchanged for well over a century. I've provided citations affirming this consensus, and you've refused to back up your comments. Why not just admit that you're wrong? EDIT: Rate limited by HN, so I guess we are done here. I'm not sure…

> it's about the scientific consensus in the field of biology. The same consensus that has remain unchanged for well over a century.

What rot, even a casual perusual of literature will confirm debate.

> I've provided citations affirming this consensus

You've cited a single faction that have only recently surged across public communications.

The fact that you're claiming to be unaware of the debate, the history, the SA hermaphrodite group to whom I refered tells me a great deal.

I suspect we're done here.

For now I've a cluster of 12 tonne lego pieces to fit together and seal up, I'll check in later to see if you've any reflection on the actual politics and culture trappings about this matter that are driving the presentation of a factional PoV.

I look forward to some grown up adult comment, not any childish gotcha traps.

Re: Avoid UUID Version 4 Primary Keys in Postgres

#450

Post by mkleczek »

dpark wrote: post #433
mkleczek wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure you are arguing against my claims or not :) I am not arguing against surrogate keys in general . They are obviously very useful _internally_ to introduce a level of indirection. But if they are used _internally_ then it doesn't really matter if they are UUIDs or sequence numbers or whatever - it is just an implementation detail. What I claim is that surrogate keys are problematic as _externally visible_…

> I think you are missing the actual problem I am talking about: where does the user take the transaction ID from? Do you expect the users to remember all transaction IDs your system ever generated for them? How would they know which transaction ID to ask about? Are they expected to keep some metadata that would allow them to identify transaction IDs? But if there is metadata that enables identification of transactio…

> Your notion that you can avoid sharing internal ids is technically true, but that didn’t mean it’s a good idea. You’re trying force a philosophical viewpoint and disregarding practical concerns, many of which people have already pointed out.

What some call "philosophical viewpoint" I call "essential complexity" :)

> But to answer your question, yes, your customer will probably have some notion of a transaction id. This is why everyone gives you invoice numbers or order numbers.

We are in agreement here: externally visible identifiers are needed for many reasons (mostly technical). The discussion is not about that though but about what information should be included in these identifiers.

> This is why everyone gives you invoice numbers or order numbers.

And there are good reasons why invoice or order numbers are not randomly generated strings but contain information about the invoices and orders they identify.

My claim is that externally visible identifiers should possess a few characteristics:

* should be based on the data they identify (not detached from it)

* should be easy to remember (and that means they should be as short as possible, they should be easy to construct by a human from the data itself - so they cannot be hashes of data)

* should be versioned (ie. they should contain information somehow identifying the actual algorithm used to construct them)

* should be easy to index by database engines (that is highly db implementation dependent unfortunately)

* can be meaningfully sortable (that is not strictly a requirement but nice to have)

Coming up with an identifier having these characteristics is not trivial but is going to pay off in the long run (ie. is essential complexity).

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