redis
Switch to ByteAether.Ulid for faster, always‑reliable ULID generation
Hello!
First and foremost, thank you for the excellent work you've put into this project.
Please excuse the unsolicited suggestion. I was looking at the project dependencies and it started me thinking about the nuances of different ULID library implementations. Depending on the specific library in use, a couple of common issues can sometimes arise, and I wanted to share a thought in case it's helpful.
Many libraries have different approaches to the ULID specification, which can lead to a couple of potential outcomes:
- Incorrect Monotonicity: Some libraries don't strictly enforce monotonicity. This can cause problems in systems that rely on the sortable nature of ULIDs, as it can result in out-of-order IDs being generated, especially under high load.
- Overflow Exceptions: Other libraries, while adhering strictly to the spec, are designed to throw an exception if the random component overflows during high-frequency generation. This is a safety measure, but in a high-throughput scenario, it could unexpectedly halt ID issuance altogether.
To solve these exact problems, I ended up developing my own implementation. As a point of full transparency, I am the author of the library I'm about to suggest, called ByteAether.Ulid. I'm proposing it because I built it specifically to be a reliable and performant solution for these scenarios, and I thought it might be of value to this project.
A couple of key benefits:
- Guaranteed Monotonicity without Exceptions: Instead of throwing an error on overflow, it gracefully increments the 48-bit timestamp. This ensures IDs are always sortable and that generation never fails unexpectedly.
- Top-Tier Performance: It's benchmarked as being exceptionally fast and memory-efficient (zero allocation on generation), which is always beneficial.
If you're curious and have a moment, here are the links for your consideration:
- GitHub: https://github.com/ByteAether/Ulid
- Nuget: https://www.nuget.org/packages/ByteAether.Ulid/
- Blog Posts with deep dives: https://byteaether.github.io/series/byteaether-ulid/
Again, I hope this comes across as a helpful suggestion from one developer to another.
Thanks for your time and for all your efforts on this great project!
