The characterization of Database Management Systems (DBMS)recovery mechanisms and the comparison of the 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 s 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.