GUID: varchar(36) versus uniqueidentifier

Question

I\'m working with a legacy database that stores GUID values as a varchar(36) data type:

CREATE TABLE T_Rows (
    RowID    VARCHAR(36) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
            


        

Answer 1

I would go with uniqueidentifier for many reasons such as,

it will take less space; it's unique so it can not be duplicated. It's much better for comparisons and specially performance related issues as well as easy to get unique default value etc.

I would use uniqueidentifier unless I need to use varchar for very specific reason.