Which part of a GUID is most worth keeping?

Question

I need to generate a unique ID and was considering Guid.NewGuid to do this, which generates something of the form:

0fe66778-c4a8-4f93-9bda-366224df6f11

This is a little long for the string-type database column that it will end up residing in, so I was planning on truncating it.

The question is: Is one end of a GUID more preferable than the rest in terms of uniqueness? Should I be lopping off the start, the end, or removing parts from the middle? Or does it just not matter?

Answer 1

You can save space by using a base64 string instead:

var g = Guid.NewGuid();
var s = Convert.ToBase64String(g.ToByteArray());

Console.WriteLine(g);
Console.WriteLine(s);

This will save you 12 characters (8 if you weren't using the hyphens).