Tim Callaghan of Tokutek explains fractal trees – what they are and how they are used. He starts with a great review of how a B-tree works, and how fractal trees are different. At the end, the reason they are called “fractal trees” is revealed!
tcation
Source
Fractal Tree Indexes: Theory and Practice
Closed source, stopped caring.
SqeakyKTopp – actually, about a month after this video was taken, Tokutek open source'd TokuDB. I can't post URLs here, but web search for "tokudb open source" and you'll find their announcement April 22nd, 2013.
So you can resume caring.
These "Fractal Tree Indexes" do not seem like a fundamental data structure. Rather it's operation caching for databases –and therefore specific to the particular database implementation. Is that correct? Also, they must be fairly complex algorithm wise. Is it worth it? How much is this going to matter when common RAM sizes pass 1TB?
♡ & sub'd
This. Guy. Sounds. So. Passionate. About. His. Work.