In MariaDB, UUID_SHORT() is a built-in function that returns a short Universal Unique Identifier (UUID).

It returns a 64-bit unsigned integer (as opposed to the string-form 128-bit identifier as returned by the UUID() function).

Syntax

The syntax goes like this:

UUID_SHORT()

So, no arguments are required (or accepted).

Example

Here’s an example to demonstrate:

SELECT UUID_SHORT();

Result:

+-------------------+
| UUID_SHORT()      |
+-------------------+
| 99291717236162560 |
+-------------------+

If I call it another time, I get a different value:

SELECT UUID_SHORT();

Result:

+-------------------+
| UUID_SHORT()      |
+-------------------+
| 99291717236162561 |
+-------------------+

About the Result

The value returned by UUID_SHORT() is guaranteed to be unique if the following conditions are true:

• The server_id of the current host is unique among your set of master and slave servers
• server_id is between 0 and 255
• You don’t set back your system time for your server between mysqld restarts
• You do not invoke UUID_SHORT() on average more than 16 million times per second between mysqld restarts

Note that statements using the UUID_SHORT() function are not safe for statement-based replication.

Compared to the UUID() Function

The result returned by UUID_SHORT() is similar to the one returned by the UUID() function, except that the result returned by UUID() is a 128-bit number represented by a utf8 string of five hexadecimal numbers in aaaaaaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd-eeeeeeeeeeee format.

Here’s a comparison of the two:

SELECT 
    UUID(),
    UUID_SHORT();

Result:

+--------------------------------------+-------------------+
| UUID()                               | UUID_SHORT()      |
+--------------------------------------+-------------------+
| e67d0fc6-cd8d-11eb-be04-88e9fe739f3d | 99291717236162562 |
+--------------------------------------+-------------------+

In addition to this, from MariaDB 10.6.1, a SYS_GUID() function has been added in order to enhance Oracle compatibility.

No Arguments

As mentioned, UUID_SHORT() doesn’t accept any arguments. Here’s what happens when I pass an argument:

SELECT UUID_SHORT(3);

Result:

ERROR 1582 (42000): Incorrect parameter count in the call to native function 'UUID_SHORT'