Rigi: a system for programming-in-the-large

The authors describe Rigi, a model and tool that uses a graph model and abstraction mechanisms to structure and represent the information accumulated during the development process. The objects and relationships of the graph model represent system components and their dependencies. The objects can be arranged in aggregation and generalization hierarchies. Rigi was designed to address three of the most difficult problems in the area of programming-in-the-large: the mastery of the structural complexity of large software systems, the effective presentation of development information, and the definition of procedures for checking and maintaining the completeness, consistency, and traceability of system descriptions. Thus, the major objective of Rigi is to effectively represent and manipulate the building blocks of a software system and their myriad dependencies, thereby aiding the development phases of the project