Similar to the /proc filesystem on Linux it would be really useful to have a readonly 'virtual database' (or perhaps a virtual collection in the local database) in MongoDB which exposes various metrics, e.g. serverStatus, getCmdLineOpts, sharding info, etc, allowing this data to be accessible to the query subsystem rather than just through explicit commands. This could provide a standard interface allowing access to a vast array of useful statistics, metrics, etc for the running server.