Replace sulky-ulid with ulid-creator #1516

Current State

• Using de.huxhorn.sulky:de.huxhorn.sulky.ulid:8.3.0
• Last maintained: 2021 (3+ years stale)
• Performance: ~1.26M ops/sec, synchronized (lock contention at high concurrency)

Problem

1. Unmaintained: No updates since 2021, maintainer unresponsive
2. Lock contention: synchronized methods bottleneck at >16 threads
3. Risk: Potential Java compatibility issues in future versions

Proposal

Switch to com.github.f4b6a3:ulid-creator:5.2.3

Benefits

• ✅ Zero dependencies (same as current - no new deps)
• ✅ 3-10x faster (4.7M-100M ops/sec depending on mode)
• ✅ No lock contention (ThreadLocal-based, scales linearly)
• ✅ Actively maintained (latest release: 2026)
• ✅ Drop-in compatible (same ULID format, no breaking changes)
• ✅ Small overhead: +12 KB (18 KB vs 6 KB jar size)

Implementation

<!-- Replace -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>de.huxhorn.sulky</groupId>
    <artifactId>de.huxhorn.sulky.ulid</artifactId>
    <version>8.3.0</version>
</dependency>

<!-- With -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.github.f4b6a3</groupId>
    <artifactId>ulid-creator</artifactId>
    <version>5.2.3</version>
</dependency>

Code changes minimal - both produce standard ULID format.

References

• ulid-creator: https://github.com/f4b6a3/ulid-creator
• Performance benchmarks: https://github.com/f4b6a3/ulid-creator#benchmark
• ULID spec: https://github.com/ulid/spec