> ...which is well beyond any practical system's capacity.
Well beyond a single server but not single systems. Large analytical data models run into the tens of exabytes in practical systems already. It isn't hypothetical and probabilistic identifiers become inadvisable[0] in those systems.
Not everything is a web app and UUIDv4 does not scale infinitely.
[0] Technically you can use probabilistic identifiers if you widen them beyond 128-bits, but at that scale the compactness of unique identifiers has a large impact on performance and cost, so 128-bit deterministic identifiers are preferable.
Well beyond a single server but not single systems. Large analytical data models run into the tens of exabytes in practical systems already. It isn't hypothetical and probabilistic identifiers become inadvisable[0] in those systems.
Not everything is a web app and UUIDv4 does not scale infinitely.
[0] Technically you can use probabilistic identifiers if you widen them beyond 128-bits, but at that scale the compactness of unique identifiers has a large impact on performance and cost, so 128-bit deterministic identifiers are preferable.