Although the MongoDB server operates above the storage engine layer, the current create command allows users to specify storage engine specific options to be applied to newly created collections.

When checking metadata consistency across nodes within a replica set or between shards, we double check if collection options—including storage engine options—are aligned. However, comparing these options using simple lexicographic equality is not reliable. We have encountered situations where the order of parameters (such as X before Y versus Y before X) or differences in syntax (like 0 instead of false) varied, even though the underlying semantics were identical.

Example of same config strings with different shapes:

cache_resident=false,internal_key_truncate=,log=(enabled=)
cache_resident=0,internal_key_truncate=true,log=(enabled=true)

Since the database currently defaults to WiredTiger as its storage engine, this ticket aims to provide an API so that the upper layer can determine whether two storage engine option configString are semantically equivalent, even if their representations differ.