To clarify, I’m using one of these NoSQL databases whose idea of sorting is limited to lexicographic sort (i.e., stringy sort: leveldb, CouchDB). I use ISO-formatted timestamps—“2017-07-03T17:48:12.857Z”—as part of the stringy key to get temporal sorting, but naturally this will break in the year 10k of the Common Era, since `10000-01-01T…` sorts before `9999-12-12T…` (or `2017-07-03T…` for that matter).

Lexicographic sorting, ladies and gents…