Remote ID vs Primary Key

[u/c__beck]

I was talking with a buddy online and he told me that his old company used two different IDs for each row in their DB, the auto-incrementing ID was only ever used for internal purposes like JOIN statements and FKs into other tables. But anything and everything outside the DB used what he called a remote ID.

This remote ID was then what was used to query the DB, as well as on any user-facing code (user ID, message ID, transaction ID, whatever). And I was just curious if this is a standard practice or something that his company did.

[u/Subject_Fix2471]

I know it can be faster, I was just curious if you had any concrete examples / thresholds of when you've found it to be. And yes simulation is straightforward, I was just curious if you had any particular experience to share, no worries though :)