What is the smallest way to store a UUID that is human readable?

Question

What is the smallest way to store a UUID that is human readable and widely database compatible?

I am thinking a char array of some sort using hex values?

Answer 1

You might find the latest podcast relevant:

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail4087.html

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/721497/database-wide-unique-yet-simple-identifiers-in-sql-server

Answer 2

As common approach, i think that encoding the binary data (16 bytes) as Base64 could be what you want.

Answer 3

A UUID is defined as a 128-bit number. It doesn't get smaller or bigger than that. You can, of course, inflate your storage requirements by storing the number as something other than a number, but that is up to you and your requirements.

Answer 4

Use Base-85 encoding to store the UUID as 20 US-ASCII characters.