Per daniel.gottlieb:

This seems to be a case of composing two separate write units of work into a big one. I believe the sequence for creating the first view on a database does:

1. Begin a transaction
2. Create the view (insert into _mdb_catalog, also creates an index on the view)
3. Set timestamp 1
4. Write creation into oplog with ts: 1
5. Insert new view into collection
6. Set timestamp 2
7. Write insert into oplog with ts: 2
8. Commit transaction

The collection is implicitly created here in the greater WUOW. CRUD op implicit collection creation happens here in its own WUOW.