As database systems have grown in terms of scale and complexity, administration tasks have become increasingly difficult and time consuming. A scarcity of skilled database professionals has meant that human costs have begun to dominate the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a database system. Database vendors are under immense pressure to provide solutions that make their products easy to administer in areas such as problem diagnostics, monitoring, query tuning, access control and system configuration.

Abstract A discussion is presented of system issues in integrating an artificial intelligence system with a conventional computer‐aided design system. Two different schemes for integration, and experience in implementing a combined VM/PROLOG and CADAM, are described. Both Prolog and CADAM are separately interactively systems, and it was necessary to provide an interactive interface to each, and to be able to move between them. Since CADAM is not reentrant, a coroutining relationship was required. It was necessary to specify a Prolog form for drawings and to be able to transform drawings in the CADAM workspace in Fortran array form into Prolog clauses, representing the same information and residing in the Prolog workspace, and vice versa. The problems of linking to CADAM, and of storage management in a VM virtual machine had to be dealt with. Finally, error recovery had to be considered. Examples of the use of the system are presented, including examples of CAD graphics, and the setting of goals, with the corresponding system responses. The main practical application area was the design and manufacture of assemblies made of sheet metal and extrusions, such as components of aircraft. Several application programs, implemented using the intelligent CAD system, are described.