Test fixture implementations that start and stop a mongodb instance would be much simpler, if mongod could be used to shut down a running server, e.g. with: mongod --port 12345 --shutdown

Code to set up and tear down a mongodb instance could then be purely static. Currently, an active connection is used to shut down the DB with the "shutdown" command. This means that this approach i.e. cannot be used in @AfterClass annotated methods in JUnit tests, because those methods must be static.