UUID ​

UUID stores a universally unique identifier. Text input is parsed as a UUID and displayed using its canonical lowercase, hyphenated spelling.

Syntax ​

UUID

Invalid UUID text raises TYPE_MISMATCH. UUID values support equality, ordering, grouping and indexes. They are identifiers rather than numeric operands; direct numeric arithmetic and numeric aggregates reject them.

Use gen_random_uuid() for a random version 4 UUID or uuidv7() for a time-ordered version 7 UUID. These functions produce native UUID values.

Usage Example ​

Normalizing UUID text ​

SELECT CAST('550E8400-E29B-41D4-A716-446655440000' AS UUID)
FORMAT csv;

"550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000"

Using a UUID key ​

CREATE TABLE documents(id UUID PRIMARY KEY, title String);
INSERT INTO documents VALUES
    ('550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000', 'Project notes');

SELECT title
FROM documents
WHERE id = '550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000'
FORMAT csv;

"Project notes"

Checking a generated UUID version ​

SELECT uuid_extract_version(gen_random_uuid()),
       uuid_extract_version(uuidv7())
FORMAT csv;

4,7

See UUID functions for generation, version extraction and timestamp extraction.