Stop using Integer ID’s in your Database

The problem is that most companies don’t apply the required forethought to creating the right primary keys to allow data from different channels to be merged.

Having a unique ID number for every object can come in handy when you’re trying to determine whether two objects are the same as each other.

This approach has typically lead to expensive, monster-sized databases that are not designed for a specific purpose and do not perform well.

As in the case of human institutions, one of the points of giving objects ID numbers in Ruby is to be able to make unique identifications—and, in particular, to be able to determine when two objects are the same object.