Compatibility Changes in MongoDB 3.4

The following 3.4 changes can affect the compatibility with older versions of MongoDB.

See also Release Notes for MongoDB 3.4.

Sharded Cluster Changes

shardsvr Requirement

For a 3.4 sharded cluster, mongod instances for the shards must explicitly specify its role as a shardsvr, either via the configuration file setting sharding.clusterRole or via the command line option --shardsvr.


Default port for mongod instances with the shardsvr role is 27018. To use a different port, specify net.port setting or --port option.

3.4 mongos and Earlier Versions of mongod

Version 3.4 mongos instances cannot connect to earlier versions of mongod instances.

Removal for Configuration Options

MongoDB 3.4 removes the following configuration options from the mongos:

  • sharding.chunkSize configuration file setting and --chunkSize command-line option
  • sharding.autoSplit configuration file setting and --noAutoSplit command-line option

Removal of Support for SCCC Config Servers

3.4 sharded clusters no longer support the use of mirrored (SCCC) mongod instances as config servers. The use of SCCC config servers, deprecated in the 3.2 release, is no longer valid. Instead, deploy your config servers as a replica set (CSRS).

To upgrade your sharded cluster to version 3.4, the config servers must be running as a replica set.

To convert your existing config servers from SCCC to CSRS, see the MongoDB 3.4 manual Upgrade Config Servers to Replica Set.

Initial Sync and renameCollection

If a collection is renamed on the sync source while an initial sync is running, the initial sync process fails and restarts to avoid possible data corruption. See SERVER-26117.

Operations that rename collections include:

As such, when upgrading from 3.2.11 or earlier versions to 3.4, initial syncs may start failing if they encounter renameCollection operations.

In MongoDB versions 3.2.11 or earlier versions, initial sync process would proceed when encountering renameCollection operations, which could potentially corrupt data. See SERVER-4941.

Deprecated Operations


Mongodb 3.4 deprecates the following commands and mongo shell methods:

aggregate without cursor

MongoDB 3.6 removes the use of aggregate command without the cursor option unless the command includes the explain option. Unless you include the explain option, you must specify the cursor option.

To indicate a cursor with the default batch size, specify cursor: {}.

To indicate a cursor with a non-default batch size, use cursor: { batchSize: <num> }.

Stricter Validation of Collection and Index Specifications

Stricter Validation of Collection Options

MongoDB 3.4 enforces a stricter validation of collection options during create and db.createCollection() operations; namely, the specified options must be valid options supported by create and db.createCollection().

For example, the following operation is no longer valid:

db.createCollection( "myCappedCollection", { cappedtypo: true, size: 5242880 } )

Stricter Validation of Index Specifications

MongoDB 3.4 enforces a stricter validation of index specification during createIndexes and db.collection.createIndex() operations. The enforcement does not apply to existing indexes.

Stricter validation include the following:

  • Ensuring that the value in the index key pattern key: value is valid. Specifically, value can be:

    Value Description
    A number greater than 0 For ascending index
    A number less than 0 For descending index
    String “text”, “2dsphere”, “2d”, or “hashed” For special index types

    For example, the following operations are no longer valid:

    db.collection.createIndex( { x: 0 } );
    db.collection.createIndex( { y: "text2d" } );
    db.collection.createIndex( { z: NaN } );
    db.collection.createIndex( { x: 1, unique: true } )
  • Ensuring that the specified index options are valid. Previous versions ignored invalid options. For example, the following operations are no longer valid:

    db.collection.createIndex( { y: 1 }, { uniques2: true} );
    db.collection.createIndex( { z: 1 }, { expireAfterSec: 350 } )

General Compatibility Changes

  • Removal of deprecated textSearchEnabled parameter. Starting from version 2.6, MongoDB enables the text search feature by default.

  • Removal of mongosniff. In MongoDB 3.4, mongosniff is replaced by mongoreplay, which offers a more flexible superset of mongosniff’s functionality.

  • Updates to $project specification behavior: empty documents in $project specifications produce an error.

  • If you include a hint() that specifies a sparse index when you perform a count() of all documents in a collection (i.e. with an empty query predicate), the sparse index is used even if the sparse index results in an incorrect count.

    db.collection.insert({ _id: 1, y: 1 } );
    db.collection.createIndex( { x: 1 }, { sparse: true } );
    db.collection.find().hint( { x: 1 } ).count();

    To obtain the correct count, do not hint() with a sparse index when performing a count of all documents in a collection.

    db.collection.createIndex({ y: 1 });
    db.collection.find().hint({ y: 1 }).count();

    Previous versions ignored the hint if the use of the sparse index would result in an incomplete count.

User Roles Changes

The privileges of the following built-in roles no longer apply to the local and config databases:

readAnyDatabase Starting in 3.4, to provide read privileges on the local database, create a user in the admin database with read role in the local database. See also clusterManager and clusterMonitor role for access to the config and local databases.
readWriteAnyDatabase Starting in 3.4, to provide readWrite privileges on the local database, create a user in the admin database with readWrite role in the local database. See also clusterManager and clusterMonitor role for access to the config and local databases.
dbAdminAnyDatabase Starting in 3.4, to provide dbAdmin privileges on the local database, create a user in the admin database with dbAdmin role in the local database. See also clusterManager and clusterMonitor role for access to the config and local databases.

Correspondingly, the following built-in roles include additional read and write privileges on local and config databases:

Backwards Incompatible Features

The following 3.4 features persist data that earlier MongoDB versions cannot correctly handle and require that featureCompatibilityVersion be set to "3.4":

  • Views

  • Collation and Case-Insensitive Indexes

  • Decimal Type

  • Index version v: 2. v:2 indexes add support for collation and decimal data type. Earlier index versions support neither collation nor the decimal data type.

    If featureCompatibilityVersion: "3.4", indexes created in MongoDB 3.4 default to v: 2 . Otherwise, new indexes default to v: 1.

To set the featureCompatibilityVersion, see setFeatureCompatibilityVersion command.


Enabling these backwards-incompatible features can complicate the downgrade process. For details, see Remove 3.4 Incompatible Features.


3.4 deployments have the following default featureCompatibilityVersion values:

3.4 Deployments featureCompatibilityVersion
For new deployments "3.4"
For deployments upgraded from 3.2 "3.2" until you setFeatureCompatibilityVersion to "3.4".

Earlier versions of MongoDB will not start if the database contains views, collation specifications, or v:2 indexes. If the data contains the decimal data type, operations against these documents may fail. See Downgrade MongoDB 3.4 to 3.2 for details. If you need to downgrade, you must remove data related to these incompatible features from your database before downgrading the binaries.

Driver Compatibility Changes

To use the various new features such as the new Decimal Type and Collation with a MongoDB driver, an upgrade to a driver version that supports these features is necessary.

Single Element $in With upsert

When an upsert operation finds no matching documents, it creates a document to insert based on the equality statements in the query and then applies the update modifiers to this seeded document. For example:

db.c.update( { a : 3, b: "foo" }, { $set : { c : 15 } }, { upsert : true } )
{ "_id" : ObjectId("59c03009529946822d0afb8c"), "a" : 3, "b" : "foo", "c" : 15 }

Prior to 3.4, a single-element $in query did not seed the upsert document. In the example below, the $addToSet update expression is successful because of this behavior:

db.c.update( { a : { $in : [1] } }, { $addToSet : { a : 2 } }, { upsert : true } )
{ "_id" : ObjectId("58bdb00eb39e8f87607e9222"), "a" : [ 2 ] }

In 3.4 and newer versions, however, a single-element $in behaves like an equality statement for upserts. If the query includes this condition on a field, the field value is set to the element.

As a result of this behavior, certain upsert operations may fail in 3.4. In example above, the $addToSet upsert would fail because the a field would be seeded with a single value, and $addToSet cannot be applied to a scalar field. To avoid this error, you must wrap the $in expression in an $elemMatch expression:

   { a : { $elemMatch : { $in : [ 2 ] } } },
   { $addToSet : { a: 3 } },
   { upsert: true } )
{ "_id" : ObjectId("..."), "a" : [ 3 ] }