alt Hacker NewsNo, ULID has a "monotonic" feature, where if it detects the same millisecond timestamp in back to back calls, it just increments the 80 bit "random" portion. This means it has convoying behavior. If two machines are generating ids independently and happen to choose initial random positions near each other, the probability of collision is much higher than the basic birthday bound.
I think this "sort of monotonic but not really" is the worst of both to be honest. It tempts you to treat it like an invariant when it isn't.
If you want monotonicity with independent generation, just use a composite key that's a lamport clock and a random nonce. Or if you want to be even more snazzy use Hybrid Logical Clocks or similar.
Replies
I dont think this holds up. Define "near each other" in an 80-bit random space. Further, the likelihood of a potential conflict is offset by the fact that you have far fewer "initial random positions" instead of every single element defining its own random position. And the extra random bits (over UUID7) reduce conflict possibilities by orders of magnitude.
I concede I'm no mathematician and I could be wrong here, but your analysis feels similar to assuming 10-11-12-13-14-15 is less likely to be a winning lottery ticket because the odds against consecutive numbers are so massive.
> If two machines are generating ids independently and happen to choose initial random positions near each other, the probability of collision is much higher than the basic birthday bound.
But the chance of the initial random positions being near each other is very very low.
If you pick a billion random numbers in an 80 bit space, the chance you have a collision is one in a million. (2^80 / (2^30)^2)
If you pick a thousand random starting points and generate a million sequential numbers each, the chance your starting points are sufficiently close to each other to cause an overlap is one in a trillion. ((2^80 / 2^20) / (2^10)^2)
In that one in a trillion case, you'll likely end up with half a million collisions, which might matter to you. But if you care about 0 collisions versus 1+ collisions, pick the monotonic version.