• Re-numbering from the end covers only the insert case.
• If you delete elements you need to renumber from the start.
• If you move elements you need to delete and insert...

  (Move is even trickier because in which state are the elements in between? And what happens if an error occurs then?)

• There are even two kinds of "move", moving inside the same array and moving from another array.

  (But I think this is easy to handle, just change the parent_id in the second case)

• Finally there is the copy case, where elements must be (deeply) cloned before inserting. (But this problem exists in all models)

Hope this is clearer without needing to produce examples.

My approach allows to stack multiple such operations and just to renumber at the end.