Currently, there are tests for SDAM state transitions ("sdam") and some of the events generated by SDAM flow ("sdam monitoring"), but there are areas not covered by the existing monitoring tests, specifically:

• server removal/server close events
• some situations when the first response is not from primary
• multiple servers responding

The existing "sdam" tests cover topology outcomes in most of these cases, but those tests do not specify the order in which events should be published (or event contents, but this is a minor point).

https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SPEC-1280 proposes to add a number of "sdam monitoring" tests to formalize the order of sdam events being published in various situations.

In order for the new tests to be possible, a change in spec runner is necessary which is to perform assertions on events generated during cluster/topology construction prior to any responses being received from any of the servers.

This ticket covers the spec runner change - specifically, defining how SDAM spec runner should be implemented with respect to events in multiple phases.