[leif]

Unfortunately, this would break compatibility with existing MongoDB applications more than we would probably be willing to do. However, there's no reason RethinkDB couldn't use Fractal Tree indexing instead of B-trees, given some engineering effort.

[ddorian43]

but rethinkdb doesn't have range-sharding (they had it but they are/did change it to random(id), also no sharding(custom_field))