SERIAL vs. OIDs

From: Jay Bloodworth <jay(at)dokodiner(dot)com>
To: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: SERIAL vs. OIDs
Date: 1999-08-29 22:52:11
Message-ID: 37C9B99B.4C68BFBA@dokodiner.com
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Seeking informed opinion on what is better to use as a unique row id for
linking tables together in a normalized database, a SERIAL field or the
pgsql OID. This is for an intranet application with a small user base,
but I'd like to make it robust and scalable where it is easy to do so.
My conclusions so far:

OIDs:

Pros:
* They're already there; save a couple bytes per row
* Specific method to retrieve after INSERT (maybe faster than SELECT
on the sequence)

Cons:
* Not serial by table; hard to build linked table 'by hand'
* not pure SQL

SERIAL:

Pros:
* Based on fairly vanilla SQL
* Easier to reproduce all or part of a db on a dump/restore

Cons:
* Performance?
* Extra id field redundant

I'm sure I'm missing something, and I'm not entirely sure how to weight
the points I've got. Advice appreciated.

Please CC me. I subscribed to the digest.

Jay

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