benefits of using unique identifiers as primary key? in sql server

Question

as opposed to int or bigint?

Also what are some drawbacks? slower performance?

Answer 1

The only benefit I can think of is that it may make the table more "human" readable. Potential drawbacks and things to consider are:

• Is it truly a unique identifier?
• Performance may be affected depending on how large you need to scale. You may need to check if SQL Server indexes' performance is impacted.

Personally, I prefer a surrogate key number that uses an auto-increment, but it really depends on your situation.

If you were referring to the SQL Server IDENTITY column, then you may want to check out the following article, which I found helpful. Understanding SQL Server Identity Columns