appliedThrough/minValid are for a crash recovery mechanism that allowed secondaries to apply oplog entries in parallel in back in a time when every write was journaled.

Modern MongoDB with a standard configuration (WT + stable checkpoints) have no need for these values. appliedThrough has been replaced with the stable checkpoints timestamp (recoveryTimestamp). minValid is obsoleted as we only checkpoint at a timestamp where all previous writes have been committed.

Writing to appliedThrough + minValid for each batch can have a noticeable performance cost in addition to breaking a WT contract (albeit in a benign way, it causes some maintainability problems with WT). We must(ish) choose a timestamp when writing to this document, and that timestamp is often the stable timestamp.

But for clarity, I think the values should stay and still the server should maintain existing behavior when those values exist. I believe backup/restore relies on them as well as maybe initial sync and rollback via refetch?

The complete ask:

• Cease the writes before and after every batch of secondary oplog application
• Never write to it with a timestamp. Or always? With more thoughtful consideration of the stable timestamp.
  • With care. I haven't combed through the more nuanced writes to this document myself to understand any possible complications.