The base64 representation of the ID is clunky to work with

[ckreibich]

The standard rendering of the ID (eg 1:ZEYOYMeyZNQC9DAdgsBZCtiTKqw=) is not only not very nice to look at, but can break standard string handling in SIEM pipelines and other tools (so you need to add quotes, for example). A reduced character set would work better here, at the expense of a slightly longer string.

I'm considering moving to something like base58 as a default for version 2 of the ID. Thoughts welcome.

[sfd]

So 20 bytes of SHA1 becomes 28 bytes in Base64, saving 12 bytes compared to hexadecimal at 40 bytes, although with quotes you get to 30. How long would it be in Base58? Is it worth it? Most databases would compress the field content anyway?