Comment on What happens when the US runs out of SSNs?

AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• rbn@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Why stop at hex? You could use the entire alphabet. Even if you take only uppercase letters and numbers, we are at 36^9 possible numbers. If we include lowercase and special characters from ASCII, we can go much further.

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  • Piafraus@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    E. G. For storage and performs reasons. 5 bytes vs 36 bytes. Multiplying by amount of users and various indexes - can produce very noticeably difference. More records per page.

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    • rbn@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      If we assume that the SSN database internally only stores numbers today but could also store hexadecimal values without significant redesigns, I would assume that SSNs are stored as text already. So no matter if you put numbers, hex or text, 9 places will always use 9 bytes (assuming it’s ASCII only and doesn’t support UTF-8 etc.).

      As the post implied that the current technical limit is 999,999,999. That very much sounds like a character data type to me. Otherwise, the limit is usually something like 2^x.

      If SSNs are stored as numbers today, then hex and text would lead to quite some change. If you go for a re-design, you can as well just increase the length of the field.

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      • kSPvhmTOlwvMd7Y7E@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        This man backs ends^

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