ULIDbased

ULIDbased describes systems and designs that generate identifiers using ULID as the primary scheme. ULID stands for Universally Unique Lexicographically Sortable Identifier and encodes a 128-bit value into a 26-character string using Crockford's base32. It consists of a 48-bit timestamp in milliseconds since the Unix epoch and 80 bits of randomness, yielding globally unique, time-ordered IDs when produced with a cryptographically strong RNG.

Key property is lexicographic sortability by creation time, enabling efficient range queries and ordered logs without centralized coordination. This makes ULID-based IDs suitable for distributed databases, event streams, message queues, and other systems that require scalable, time-ordered identifiers across processes and machines.

Implementation considerations include ensuring a high-entropy RNG, robust clock sources, and handling clock skew. Some deployments expose the timestamp; others redact or obfuscate it for privacy. The 26-character string is URL- and filename-friendly but longer than numeric IDs, which can affect indexing and storage patterns. High-volume systems should benchmark generation throughput and storage impact.

Cross-language support is common, with libraries in many programming languages providing ULID generation to maintain consistency across services. ULIDbased approaches emphasize decoupled ID generation, allowing services to generate identifiers locally without coordination while preserving global uniqueness and chronological ordering.

See also: ULID, Universally Unique Identifier, time-based identifiers.