A generic iconic tool for viewing databases

Many software-development environments capture and structure all project information in one or more databases. As these data-gathering techniques become more effective, they make it increasingly difficult to locate relevant information from a vast store. Adapt is a display tool that can depict both the structure and content of databases graphically. The architecture of Adapt and the augmented graph representation it uses for database objects are described. As an example, the use of Adapt with the Triad database, which has 400 objects of 24 types, ranging from management (personnel information, project objectives, reviews, and walkthroughs) to coding (components and modules), is considered. Two kinds of graph operation, display and adaptive, that an Adapt user can perform on the augmented graph are discussed.<>