Thampi, Lakshmi V.

The South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) established in 1949, is the oldest and largest water management institution in Florida. The Lake Okeechobee Ecosystem Study (LOES) a five-year study, conducted by SFWMD to collect information about water quality and other ecological factors in the Lake Okeechobee area, is one of the many projects that the SFWMD is involved in for the restoration of Florida's ecosystem. The study resulted in a large volume of information being compiled by scientists into files of different formats. Florida Atlantic University (FAU) undertook the task of restructuring the database and designing and implementing the Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) to support this ecological system. As part of an earlier project, an object model was designed to standardize the files that also helped in the creation of a relational database to store the information. A goal of the current project was to design GUIs that could be used without difficulty, by persons that may or may not be database technology familiar. This thesis describes and analyzes the design and implementation of the GUIs. It focuses on the two types of interfaces implemented, namely the Query and Administrative forms. The implementation of the GUIs were completed and tested and deployed at SFWMD.