Our enum for connection mode currently has two similar values:

1. Direct
2. Standalone

The idea was that a Standalone connection would only succeed when the server was in fact a standalone, whereas a Direct connection would succeed no matter what the actual type of the server was.

This would prevent accidental connections to secondaries or other non-primary servers.

This distinction is not currently fully implemented. We should either completely implement the distinction or remove Standalone from the connection mode enum.

If we decide to keep Standalone, a related question is what the default should be when the connection string only has a single server. Should it be Direct or Standalone?

The argument for Standalone is that this is almost always what the application wants. Directly connecting to a secondary (or arbiter or whatever) is, or should be, a very unusual case.

The argument for Direct would be that it would be more backward compatible.