Definition of fault loads based on operator faults for DMBS recovery benchmarking

The characterization of database management system (DBMS) recovery mechanisms and the comparison of recovery features of different DBMS require a practical approach to benchmark the effectiveness of recovery in the presence of faults. Existing performance benchmarks for transactional and database areas include two major components: a workload and a set of performance measures. The definition of a benchmark to characterize DBMS recovery needs a new component the faultload. A major cause of failures in large DBMS is operator faults, which make them an excellent starting point for the definition of a generic faultload. This paper proposes the steps for the definition of generic faultloads based on operator faults for DBMS recovery benchmarking. A classification for operator faults in DBMS is proposed and a comparative analysis among three commercially DBMS is presented. The paper ends with a practical example of the use of operator faults to benchmark different configurations of the recovery mechanisms of the Oracle 8i DBMS.