Warning

Beta software.

SecantusDB is past initial proving but its API surface (CLI flags, public class signatures) may still shift before 1.0. The on-disk format is WiredTiger's — the same engine MongoDB uses — and the schema we layer on top (collection / index / oplog tables) has been stable across releases; the test suite runs against real on-disk WiredTiger storage and the persistence tests explicitly verify close-and-reopen round-trips. That said, we don't yet ship a migration tool or a formal compatibility guarantee, so please don't put production data here yet — production deployments that need durable data across upgrades should still run a real mongod or postgres.

A surrogate single-node database for your tests. SecantusDB speaks the real MongoDB and PostgreSQL wire protocols on a real TCP socket, over the same WiredTiger storage engine MongoDB ships. Point your existing driver at it — pymongo, mongo-go-driver, mongosh, psycopg, psql, SQLAlchemy — and your application code doesn't know the difference, as long as it only needs single-node behaviour. No mongod or postgres to install, no port conflicts, parallel-test friendly, embedded in-process or as a standalone daemon.

Two ways to get it, depending on which server you want.

The Python servers come from PyPI and start in-process in two lines (the PostgreSQL one needs the sql extra):

pip install SecantusDB            # or "SecantusDB[sql]" for the PostgreSQL server

from pymongo import MongoClient
from secantus import SecantusDBServer

with SecantusDBServer(storage_path="./secantus-data") as server:  # port 0 = OS-assigned
    client = MongoClient(server.uri)
    db = client["mydb"]
    db["users"].insert_one({"_id": 1, "name": "Joe"})
    assert db["users"].find_one({"_id": 1})["name"] == "Joe"

import psycopg
from secantus.sql import SecantusPGServer

with SecantusPGServer(storage_path="./secantus-pg-data") as server:
    with psycopg.connect(server.uri, autocommit=True) as conn:
        conn.execute("CREATE TABLE users (id int PRIMARY KEY, name text)")
        conn.execute("INSERT INTO users VALUES (1, 'Joe')")
        assert conn.execute("SELECT name FROM users WHERE id = 1").fetchone() == ("Joe",)

The Rust servers are the fast ones, and they ship as Rust crates on crates.io, not inside the Python wheel:

cargo install secantus-mdb --version 0.5.3-beta.196   # MongoDB: the `secantusd-rs` daemon
cargo install secantus-pg --version 0.1.0-beta.17      # PostgreSQL: the `secantusd-pg` daemon
secantusd-rs --port 27017 --storage-path ./secantus-data

Both crates are pre-releases, so cargo install needs the --version: without it cargo stops at "nothing to install". The current versions are on the secantus-mdb and secantus-pg pages. Each crate is also a library: secantus_mdb::Server and secantus_pg::PgServer start a server inside a Rust test. Prebuilt archives of both Rust servers are attached to their tags on GitHub Releases.

Single-node only by design: replica sets, sharding, streaming replication, and anything else that depends on real cluster topology are out of scope. Within that scope, SecantusDB is the database your driver thinks it's talking to — same handshake, same wire frames, same error codes.

The four servers

Two wire protocols, two implementations of each, one storage format. Reach for Rust to run it; reach for Python to read it.

Server	Wire	Run it as	Role
Rust MongoDB server	MongoDB	secantusd-rs / secantus_mdb::Server	The flagship. The secantus-mdb crate; prebuilt binaries per platform
Rust PostgreSQL server	PostgreSQL	secantusd-pg	The newest. Prebuilt secantusd-pg binaries on GitHub Releases, and the secantus-pg crate
Python MongoDB server	MongoDB	SecantusDBServer / secantusd-py	The readable reference — every operator, stage and error message lands here first
Python PostgreSQL server	PostgreSQL	SecantusPGServer / secantusd-py-pg	The reference for the SQL surface, and still the most complete one

Each server is held to the real product it imitates — mongod for the two MongoDB servers, PostgreSQL for the two SQL servers — never to another SecantusDB server. See The two servers for what each one does not support yet.

Sharing one store. All four read and write the same on-disk format, but how they can share it depends on the pair:

• The Python pair can share one Storage object in one process (SecantusPGServer(..., storage=mongo_server.storage)) and serve both protocols at once: a collection written with pymongo is queryable as a SQL table, JOINs and all, with no CREATE TABLE.
• Separate processes — including the two Rust servers — can only hand a directory over, never serve it concurrently. WiredTiger takes an exclusive file lock, so a second server pointed at a directory that is already open exits rather than opening it. Between the Rust pair the hand-over works in one direction only: a table written by secantusd-pg reads back through secantusd-rs as a collection, but a pymongo-written collection is not visible to the Rust PostgreSQL server until something runs CREATE TABLE for it.

Storage engine

SecantusDB uses the same WiredTiger C library mongod ships — vendored at vendor/wiredtiger/ (mongodb-7.0.33) and built from source into the wheel. There is no re-implementation of the storage engine: B-trees, page eviction, write-ahead logging, durability, and on-disk format are all WiredTiger's.

The layers above storage — command dispatch, query planning, the operator engines — are where the servers differ. On a like-for-like benchmark the Rust MongoDB server runs within 1.0×–3.2× of mongod per operation across three runs (reads at the low end, multi-stage aggregation at the high end); the Python server runs 2×–27×. See docs/benchmark.md for the numbers and methodology. The right use is tests, dev, CI, containers, and single-node prototypes where conformance and WiredTiger durability matter more than per-operation latency.

What's in scope: MongoDB

Everything a single-node application needs from the wire — the handshake (hello / isMaster / ping / buildInfo / ...), CRUD (insert / find / update / delete / findAndModify / count / drop), cursors with getMore / killCursors, aggregation pipelines and the expression language they need, multi-document transactions, and change streams (single-node, oplog-backed; collection / db / cluster scope; resume tokens; fullDocument: "updateLookup"; pre-images via fullDocumentBeforeChange; blocking awaitData getMore). All backed by a real query planner with index acceleration — single-field, compound, mixed-direction, multikey, partial, sparse, TTL, sort — explain output (IXSCAN vs COLLSCAN), and geo support ($geoWithin / $geoIntersects / $near / $nearSphere, $geoNear, 2dsphere and 2d indexes).

The target is mongod 8.x, and the Rust server passes 99.5% of pymongo's own unmodified test suite (1,205 of 1,210 run, 2026-09-28). Twelve other official drivers run their suites against it too — see the conformance validation summary.

Security: SCRAM-SHA-256 authentication, the MONGODB-X509 cert-as-username mechanism, native TLS / mTLS, and role-based authorization with mongod's built-in roles. All off by default; turn auth on with --auth (or require_auth=True), provision users with createUser, then connect with the standard MongoClient(uri, username=, password=) shape. See Authentication.

What's out of scope: real replica sets, sharding, auth mechanisms beyond SCRAM / MONGODB-X509 (no LDAP / Kerberos / GSSAPI / AWS / OIDC), OP_COMPRESSED, text / hashed / wildcard indexes, and $where / $function / $accumulator / mapReduce (no embedded JS runtime). If you need those, run a real mongod.

What's in scope: PostgreSQL

The subset of the PostgreSQL wire protocol real clients use — the extended query protocol (Parse / Bind / Describe / Execute), prepared statements and portals, text and binary formats, transactions with savepoints and two-phase commit, COPY, server-side cursors, LISTEN / NOTIFY, and the catalog tables a client introspects.

The Rust PostgreSQL server parses SQL with libpg_query — the real PostgreSQL grammar. Of the 5,731 tests of psycopg 3's own unmodified suite that ran against it on 2026-10-10 (macOS, psycopg 3.3.4), it passes 5,544 and fails none; psycopg skips 149 and expects 34 to fail. That gauge measures the protocol and the type system. The query language now covers joins, correlated subqueries and CTEs, window functions, GROUP BY with GROUPING SETS, views, indexes, ALTER TABLE, ON CONFLICT, MERGE, triggers and PL/pgSQL functions, and it offers TLS (--tls-cert-file / --tls-key-file), with client certificates and SCRAM channel binding since 0.1.0-beta.10. Not yet: a foreign table's rows, and a collection written through the MongoDB server read as a table. EXPLAIN prints a plan with zero costs. What it does not do it refuses with SQLSTATE 0A000 rather than answering wrongly.

The Python PostgreSQL server has the wider SQL surface, including schema-on-read over MongoDB collections (nested documents surface as jsonb with ->, ->>, #>). It needs the sql extra:

pip install "SecantusDB[sql]"
secantusd-py-pg --host 127.0.0.1 --port 5432 --storage-path ./secantus-data

See SQL / PostgreSQL interface for the supported-SQL matrix and examples.

Installation

pip install SecantusDB

Pre-built wheels are published for CPython 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, and 3.13 on:

• macOS arm64 (Apple Silicon)
• Linux x86_64 and aarch64 (manylinux_2_28 / glibc, and musllinux_1_2 / Alpine)
• Windows AMD64

Each wheel carries both Python servers and WiredTiger itself — no separate package, no compile step, no system build tools required. It does not carry the Rust servers (see below). macOS Intel (x86_64) is not in the wheel matrix.

Both Rust servers install from crates.io: cargo install secantus-mdb --version 0.5.3-beta.196 and cargo install secantus-pg --version 0.1.0-beta.17. Each needs a Rust toolchain and builds WiredTiger as part of the crate.

Standalone archives of secantusd-rs (Linux x86_64, macOS arm64, Windows x86_64) and secantusd-pg (Linux x86_64, macOS arm64) are attached to the secantusdb-v* and secantusd-pg-v* tags on GitHub Releases, for when you want the server without Python at all.

Building from source (unsupported platforms only)

If your platform isn't in the matrix above, pip install SecantusDB falls back to the sdist and compiles WiredTiger from source. That needs three native build tools on PATH:

• cmake (>= 3.21)
• ninja
• swig (>= 4.0)

Platform	Install prerequisites
macOS (Homebrew)	brew install cmake ninja swig
Debian/Ubuntu	sudo apt-get install -y cmake ninja-build swig
Fedora/RHEL	sudo dnf install -y cmake ninja-build swig
Alpine	apk add --no-cache cmake ninja swig build-base

See Installation for dev-install instructions.

Standalone daemons (drop-in mongod / postgres replacements)

Installing the secantus-mdb crate puts secantusd-rs on your PATH (or unpack a release archive). Run it like you'd run mongod:

secantusd-rs --host 127.0.0.1 --port 27017 --storage-path ./secantus-data

The Rust PostgreSQL server comes from the secantus-pg crate or a release archive, and takes positional arguments:

secantusd-pg ./secantus-pg-data 127.0.0.1:5432

Then point any driver or tool at it — no application code changes, just the connection string:

mongosh mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017
mongodump --uri mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017 --out ./dump
psql "host=127.0.0.1 port=5432 dbname=postgres user=postgres"

The Python reference servers run the same way as secantusd-py and secantusd-py-pg.

Examples

A walk through the operations a typical application exercises — connect, insert, index, query, drop. Full version with explanations: examples in the docs.

import tempfile

from pymongo import MongoClient
from secantus import SecantusDBServer

# A throwaway directory so the snippet is self-contained; pass a real
# path to keep the data across restarts.
with SecantusDBServer(storage_path=tempfile.mkdtemp()) as server:
    client = MongoClient(server.uri)
    cellar = client["wine_cellar"]
    bottles = cellar["bottles"]

    # --- Insert ---
    bottles.insert_one(
        {"_id": 1, "name": "Pommard 2018", "region": "Burgundy", "year": 2018}
    )
    bottles.insert_many(
        [
            {"_id": 2, "name": "Brunello 2015", "region": "Tuscany", "year": 2015},
            {"_id": 3, "name": "Barolo 2017", "region": "Piedmont", "year": 2017},
            {"_id": 4, "name": "Pommard 2020", "region": "Burgundy", "year": 2020},
        ]
    )

    # --- Indexes ---
    bottles.create_index([("year", 1)])                     # single-field
    bottles.create_index([("region", 1), ("year", -1)])     # compound

    # --- Query ---
    drinkable_now = list(
        bottles.find({"year": {"$lte": 2018}}).sort("year")
    )
    assert [b["name"] for b in drinkable_now] == [
        "Brunello 2015",
        "Barolo 2017",
        "Pommard 2018",
    ]

    by_region = list(
        bottles.aggregate(
            [
                {"$group": {"_id": "$region", "count": {"$sum": 1}}},
                {"$sort": {"_id": 1}},
            ]
        )
    )

    # --- Drop ---
    bottles.drop()                              # one collection
    client.drop_database("wine_cellar")         # whole database

Admin web UI

An optional local console — browse collections, watch live metrics, tail change streams, inspect query plans, manage users, and take backups (including point-in-time recovery) against any SecantusDB or MongoDB-wire server you already have running.

pip install 'SecantusDB[admin]'
secantus-admin --uri mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017

It's dev-tool shaped, not a production console: loopback-only, gated by a local token, with every script and stylesheet served from the package. See the admin UI docs for a tour of all 22 pages.

Documentation

Full docs are at secantusdb.com/docs — with the Rust server's own tree at secantusdb.com/docs/rust. Highlights:

• Quickstart — embedding in tests, running standalone.
• The two servers — Rust vs Python server, and what each doesn't support yet.
• SQL / PostgreSQL interface — the supported SQL surface.
• Architecture — the layered design.
• Indexes — what find() and aggregate accelerate, explain semantics, hints, partial indexes, TTL.
• Aggregation — supported pipeline stages and expression operators.
• Compatibility — the divergences you should know about before you point an application at SecantusDB.
• Conformance validation — each official driver's own test suite run unmodified against SecantusDB, with a cross-driver summary table and a per-driver report. The other-language gauges catch wire-protocol bugs that pymongo's permissive client accepts silently (e.g. int32-vs-int64 cursor ids).

Development

git clone https://github.com/jdrumgoole/SecantusDB.git
cd SecantusDB
git submodule update --init vendor/wiredtiger
./inv sync                     # uv sync --all-extras, rebuilding the Rust core
uv run python -m pytest        # runs in parallel under pytest-xdist

Common workflows:

uv run python -m invoke fmt    # ruff format
uv run python -m invoke lint   # ruff check
uv run python -m invoke test   # pytest, parallel
uv run python -m invoke docs   # build Sphinx docs (warnings as errors)

License

SecantusDB is dual-licensed:

• Code — GPL-2.0-only. See LICENSE. SecantusDB bundles the WiredTiger storage engine (itself GPL-2/GPL-3), so the combined work is GPL.
• Written content — Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0). See LICENSE-DOCS. Covers README.md, everything under docs/, the validation reports, and pymongo_validation/README.md. Operational instructions to AI assistants (CLAUDE.md) and vendored third-party content (under vendor/) are out of scope.