HackerReposA FIELD GUIDE TO OPEN SOURCE
ProSponsor the shelf♧ 0
← Back to top all-time
andrielfn
pg-ulid
C2023–2024
andrielfn / pg-ulid

pg-ulid

PostgreSQL extension for ULID

Data & Databases
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
2Distinct people
3Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
119GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

PostgreSQL extension for ULID

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by month3 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2023-08-18 16:41:22 UTC to 2024-12-30 00:51:54 UTC.

0122023-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 commentsAug 20232023-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 commentsApr 20242024-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 commentsDec 2024

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
Aug 20232023-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-09-01 00:00:00 UTC110
Sep 20232023-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-10-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 20232023-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-11-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Nov 20232023-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20232023-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jan 20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-02-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Feb 20242024-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-03-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Mar 20242024-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-04-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Apr 20242024-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-05-01 00:00:00 UTC000
May 20242024-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-06-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jun 20242024-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-07-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jul 20242024-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20242024-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-09-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Sep 20242024-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-10-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 20242024-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-11-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Nov 20242024-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20242024-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202

What Hacker News says

3 sources
atombender·Dec 30, 2024
A few small issues: - They call generate_ulid(now()). This returns the transaction timestamp, so all the timestamps will be the same. They should be using clock_timestamp(). - It also appears the generate_uuid() function they're using (which is not explained) is implemented with PL/PGSQL and is quite slow. There is a native C extension called pg-ulid [1] which is much faster; about 15% faster than Postgres' gen_random_uuid(). - Using EXPLAIN ANALYZE to benchmark stuff is a bad idea in generally. It will not give realistic timings, and it has a lot of overhead. EXPLAIN ANALYZE is intended to debug a query plan, not benchmark it. Instead of using EXPLAIN, you can use COPY: COPY (SELECT ...) TO '/dev/null' (FORMAT BINARY); This has the advantage that it is more realistic, since the server has to actually serialize the results, so you ge
Read the rest
t an approximation of that overhead. If you're using psql, you can enable timings and use \copy: \timing on \copy (SELECT ...) TO '/dev/null' (FORMAT BINARY); This will transfer the data from the server to psql, so it will include network time, which makes the benchmark more realistic. [1] https://github.com/andrielfn/pg-ulid
In Exploring Alternatives to UUIDv4; Enter ULIDs
atombender·Dec 29, 2024
I don't think that's right. They show in the section titled "Generating" that the performance of calling the ULID function from SQL is only very slightly slower. It's the INSERT that performs worse. Generally, inserting sorted values (like sequential integers or in this case, ULIDs) into a B-tree index is much faster than inserting random values. This is because inserted values go into the same, highly packed B-tree nodes, whereas random inserts will need to create a lot of scattered B-tree nodes, resulting in more pages written. Random values are generally faster to query, but slower to insert. In this case I think the insert speed differences may come down to the sizes of the keys. Postgres's native UUID type is 128 bits, or 16 bytes, whereas the ULID is stored as the "text" type, encoded as base32, resulting in a string that is 26 byte
Read the rest
s, plus a 32-bit string length header, so 240 bits in total, or 1.87x longer. In the benchmark, the ULID insert is about 3x that of the UUID. So the overhead may be not just the extra space but the overhead of string comparisons compared to just comparing 128-bit ints. Edit: The article doesn't actually say which ULID implementation they use. The one implemented in PL/PGSQL mentioned in one of the article's links [1] is very slow. The other [2] is quite fast, but doesn't use base32. However, this [3] native C extension is fast, about 15% faster than the UUID function on my machine. On my machine, using pg-ulid, inserting 1M rows was on average 1.2x faster for UUID than ULID (mean: 963ms vs 1131ms). This is probably all I/O, and reflects the fact that the ULIDs are longer. Raw output here: https://gist.github.com/atombender/7adccb17a95056313d0e8ff56.... Edit 2: They don't have an index on the column in the article, so my comment about B-tree performance doesn't apply here. [1] https://blog.lawrencejones.dev/ulid [2] https://blog.daveallie.com/ulid-primary-keys/ [3] https://github.com/andrielfn/pg-ulid
In Exploring Alternatives to UUIDv4; Enter ULIDs

MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME

A few shortcuts

/
Search the collection
?
Open this guide
Esc
Close dialogs and navigation

Your saved repositories and interests stay in this browser.